


The Selkie Bride

by Anonymous



Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Anxiety, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Let's Unravel That Magic!, M/M, Magical Nonsense, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Platonic Relationships, Sexual Assault, Worldbuilding, dream imagery, non-con elements, terrible puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-07-28 17:55:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20068165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Patrick Gill, local full-time gay and part-time amateur witch extraordinaire, is absolutely 100% not equipped for impromptu middle-of-the-night rescue missions, andyet, that seems to be exactly what he’s signed himself up for. On the plus side, magic is even cooler than he’s given it credit for.It’s a shame about the kidnapping, near-drowning, and the evil sorcerer, really.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [segmentcalled](https://archiveofourown.org/users/segmentcalled/gifts).
  * Inspired by [as the crow flies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19360285) by [segmentcalled](https://archiveofourown.org/users/segmentcalled/pseuds/segmentcalled). 

> Based off the amazing segmentcalled’s ‘as the crow flies’, go read that first because a) it’s incredible and made me cry literal tears of literal joy and b) you will most likely not understand a word of this unless you do. (Ha! Blackmail! Now you’ve gotta read it!) I couldn’t help but start daydreaming about bits and pieces from this wonderful universe, and before I knew it, a plot had fallen out of my brain and my fingers had started typing this story up without my consent. If any part of this contradicts any past present or future part of the ‘bright day will turn to night’ series, a) i’m sorry b) i’m super sorry i love worldbuilding and your world ran away from me.
> 
> Other notes: I’m bad at writing romance which is why it’s all peripheral here, I’m trying to get better but not today! And this first chapter’s remarkably short but there is More To Come. I promise!
> 
> Standard RPF warnings apply, blah blah, if you're here you know them already.

A small, cosy town in Maine, as it turns out, is _exactly_ the place to be.

It’s good. It’s perfect, even. Pat doesn’t think that he could have picked a better place to move to even if he tried – he’s got friends – a _lot _of friends – he’s got a _boyfriend _(and that blows his goddamn mind every time he thinks about it, because just how lucky _is _he), the streams are doing greater than great, and Thomas and Legs visit regularly and call often. The LGBT+ community in the area is amazing and the magic community is equally incredible – which makes sense, considering that the Venn diagram for those two groups is basically a circle. Turns out all gays are magic. Who knew, right?

It feels like a fairy-tale, a wonderful dream – which is only supported by the fact that his boyfriend, his actual proper real life boyfriend, is a tree. A literal oak tree, with branches and leaves and shit, who he often sleeps on as a bird because, ah yes that’s right, he’s a witch – and as it turns out, his life is just bizarre that way. Bizarre, but good.

Months pass in the way that months do – full of lively social gatherings and Twitch streams in which he and Brian eat disgusting amounts of cookies while playing Mario Kart and do audience-suggested segments and laugh themselves silly, and full of quieter moments too – walks in the woods,

And then one day Griffin vanishes.

Nobody really notices on the first day, or the second – there’s always so much going on, and it’s pretty much a given that people won’t be able to make it to all of the friendgroup gatherings, both organized and/or impromptu, one hundred percent of the time. Sometimes people are busy with other things, sometimes they’re just working on their own projects, sometimes they’re just sick of everyone else’s company, and that’s all cool and good.

By day five, there’s some people wondering – asking each other things like, _hey, have you seen Griffin recently?_ – and getting replies like,_ oh he’s probably just working on another project _or _he’s probably just editing another podcast episode and is trapped in eternal crosstalk hell, _the latter of which is typically followed with questions like _for five entire days? _and answers like _yeah man have you heard some of the shit his brothers inflict on him?, _which has the conclusion, _actually, fair enough, _and that’s that.

“Oh, he’s prolly somewhere out in the ocean, doing his inspiration-hunting thing again,” Justin says when Pat asks offhandedly about his brother’s whereabouts, during that week’s post-quiz night hangout at the bar. A few of them are clustered around the pool table at the back, trying to play a mildly drunken rendition of something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike snookers. It’s highly probaby that Jenna’s attempting to cheat by subtly tilting the table, but nobody’s tried to call her out on it yet.

“Inspiration?” Pat says, raising an eyebrow as Justin goes to jab his cue at the closest ball, and hits it off-centre, sending the balls scattering all over the table. 

Justin makes a face at his pool cue, and sets it aside. “Yeah – oh, shit, yeah, you didn’t know? Griffin’s a huge storyteller. He only realized a few years ago, when we started doing this D&D podcast with our dad, but now he just can’t get enough of it. It’s kinda his thing at this point. Every so often he’ll disappear into the ocean for a few days or a week, and go hunting shipwrecks and pirate treasure or whatever.”

“Sounds fun,” Pat says, with a lack of anything else to say. He’s had no idea about any of this up until now – he knew vaguely about the D&D podcast thing, but never really got around to listening to it.

“Sounds super fuckin’ spooky, if you ask me,” chimes in Travis from the other side of the table, holding his cue wrong and somehow managing to get two balls in with one clean strike. “He keeps trying to drag me along with him, but I keep telling him absolutely no way – these are _his _terrible life decisions, not mine.”

“He’s definitely on a spooky ocean adventure, yeah?” Justin checks.

“Oh, he super is, he poked me about it like a week ago, said he might be heading off,” Travis confirms, passing his cue off to Jenna and cheerfully not noticing as she proceeds to abuse the fragile rules of the game even further in her quest to win at any cost necessary. “He’ll be back in a bit, unless he gets distracted. You know how he is. Maybe I should have gone with him –”

“Uh-huh, because you’re the paragon of not getting distracted by anything, Scraps,” says Justin.

“Huh? Wait –” Travis notices Jenna rearranging the snooker balls in order to sink the maximum amount in one shot, and performs an admirably comical double-take. “_JENNA THAT’S ILLEGAL_ –”

Pat starts laughing and Jenna ducks under the table to avoid the ball that Travis half-jokingly aims at her head, and then five minutes later Chelsea has to step in to break up a minor bar fight. It’s the first actual bar fight that Pat’s ever been in, even if the weapons used were primarily stale breadsticks rather than fists, and the simple delight of this event is enough to drive the whole Griffin conversation out of his head until a few days later, when he and a few of the others are sitting on the nearby beach, having an impromptu, Simone-ordered-we-all-show-up-so-this-is-happening picnic. There are sandwiches of varying types and quality, and an improbably wide variety of soft drinks, and they’ve been there for a few hours, messing around and playing a bunch of games supplied by a bunch of different people.

Pat spends most of the first few hours of the picnic with Brian lounging like a diva across his lap, so when he tries to get up eventually to stretch his legs, Brian is dislodged forcibly and makes a noise like an angry cat and complains indistinctly at him until Pat rolls his eyes and kisses him and pulls his foot out from where it’s got itself wedged under Brian’s back.

“I’ll be right back, you absolute drama queen,” he says, and goes to take a short walk up and down the beach. He feels the bones in his back crack and creak as he stretches, and he’s just looking out across the waves when he hears it.

“_Hey,_” someone whispers, an exaggerated kind of stage-whisper _hey,_ and when Pat looks around to see where it’s coming from, he doesn’t see any source. There’s Brian and Ashley and Justin on the picnic blanket, arguing ardently over some card game with incomprehensible rules, and Simone splashing around cheerfully in the water, making spouts of water explode upwards into aquatic fireworks, to occasional cheers from the people on the shore.

Pat blinks, shakes his head, and dismisses it as the wind, or his imagination playing tricks on him – and he’s about to return to the picnic blanket to begin trying to work out what the fuck everybody else is doing with those cards, when he hears it again, “_hey_. Hey, it’s – over here!”

This time, he recognizes that it’s coming from a cluster of rocks only a short distance away from him – the fact that there’s a hand waving wildly at him from behind those rocks is a big help. He glances back towards the in-progress card game – getting more and more heated by the moment; Brian keeps brushing his hair back with one hand and is gesticulating wildly and pointedly with the other – and decides that if anything goes majorly wrong within the next few minutes, they’ll probably be able to hear his screams from where they are.

He goes over to the other side of the rocks.

“Oh,” he says. “Uh – hi. Hello. _Wow_.”

Half-sprawled in the shallows of a rockpool that spills out easily into the rest of the ocean is a woman with a loose-fitting shirt that (despite the fact that she’s lounging in the water) is perfectly dry. She’s got short wavy hair, kind eyes, and, oh yes, _a long pearly-grey tail in the place where her legs should be. _She’s a mermaid. A literal mermaid. A mermaid with a floral-patterned T-shirt and a tail that ends with slightly see-through fins, and yes he was fully aware that mermaids existed before this point but there’s _knowing _stuff and then there’s _seeing _stuff. Holy shit is magic cool.

“Hiya,” she says, with a sparkling grin, although there’s a bit of a worried edge to it. “You must be Patrick.”

“Just Pat’s fine,” he says, still caught on the sight of her tail, which sparkles and glimmers. He realizes that doing that might be a bit weird – well, a lot weird, and jerks his gaze away. “Sorry. I was just – ”

“No, it’s fine,” she says easily. “I get that a lot.” She splashes some water side-to-side with her tail, demonstratively, sending up bubbles and disturbing a lone starfish. “Tails are pretty cool, y’know? Everyone should have one.”

“Walking’s pretty cool too, though,” Pat says.

She laughs. “I wouldn’t know, I’ve never tried!”

Pat looks at her for a moment while his brain makes a few connections, and then says, “so, wait, are you Rachel?”

“That’s me,” says Rachel. “Griffin’s mentioned me, I guess?”

“A few times,” says Pat, which is a blatant lie, because recently, Griffin’s hardly been able to shut up about her for longer than a few minutes at a time. At the last quiz night he had been present at, he’d waxed delighted poetic for ten minutes straight about Rachel’s incorrect pronounciation of the word ‘teetotaler’ without a trace of irony. And if that’s not romance, Pat doesn’t know _what _is.

“He talks about you, a lot,” Rachel says, a fond smile hovering at her lips. “You and the rest of the land crew.” She taps the side of her nose. “Also, I follow you on Instagram. Sometimes I wish I could walk around for a bit on land just so I can meet up with you all.” The smile falls from her face, and she looks very, very worried, all of a sudden. “But, actually – that wasn’t why I waved you over. You haven’t seen Griffin around, have you?”

Pat thinks about it for a good second or two, and – this being the first time he’s actually thought about it properly – realizes with a start that no, he actually hasn’t. He’s _thought _he had – retroactively editing Griffin into the background scenes of his memory because Griffin is just kind of a regular constant presence in his life nowadays – but actually, thinking back on it? – “Justin said he was on a inspirational sea adventure,” he says. “Or something. Didn’t he tell you where he was going?”

“Yeah, he said he was heading up north to check out the Warwick wreck like a week ago,” says Rachel, “ – apparently it’s one he hasn’t been to before, and, but – I went up there a few days ago and he’s nowhere. It looks like the place hasn’t even been touched.”

Pat looks at Rachel’s worried, drawn expression. “You think something’s wrong? He got into trouble or something?”

“Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“You literally just gave every single possible response to that question.”

“Yeah, I know, I’m just –” Rachel sighs. “He hasn’t been responding to _anything. _Sometimes he drops off social media and texting for a bit, but this is – it’s been a week, Patrick, a full week. I’m getting worried. Maybe he’s gotten trapped somewhere, or got lost, or – I don’t know.”

Pat has to admit that he’s getting a bit worried himself. The pieces are trying to draw themselves together in his head, but there’s not enough of them and they’re not detailed enough for any elaborate conclusions to be made. “I get that, but also – I don’t know what you want me to do? This sounds like a job for all of you –” he makes a vague gesture with his hand – “uh, water people, I guess. I’m stuck on land. If Griffin’s got himself lost somewhere in the ocean, there’s not much I can do. Sorry.”

“I know,” Rachel says. “I’ve let Syd and Justin and Trav know, and they’re – well, they’re helping me look, but I think they all just think Griffin’s just doing his Griffin thing. I’d probably think the same,” she adds, “except he _always _texts me. Eventually. Look, all I’m asking – just keep an eye out? Or an ear out, or something?”

“Sure, yeah – of course,” Pat says, nodding. Knowing all of this is making him feel more and more useless. “Is there any way I can get to you – keep in touch? A magic word or a whistle or something?”

Rachel actually grins at that, and then tugs a phone – just a regular, ordinary iPhone with a sparkly silver case that matches her tail – out from a pocket that’s apparently sewn into the underside of her miraculously dry T-shirt. Her phone also appears to be perfectly dry. “Magic,” she explains, “or something. Got all my stuff enchanted by a sea witch a few years back, and I haven’t looked back since; it’s the literal best thing.”

“Oh yeah, magic is rad,” Pat says. “I’ve got no idea how I managed to ignore it for so long until I came here.”

“It really is!” Rachel agrees. They exchange numbers. Pat thinks for a second before adding Rachel into the Maine Crew group chat. Rachel smiles briefly at her phone as the customary flurry of messages pop up in welcoming reaction to her presence, and then she tucks it away, apparently resolving to start dealing with that particular rabbit hole later. “And – also, I was wondering. You’re a witch, right?”

“That’s what people keep telling me,” Pat says. “Although the whole ‘turning into a literal bird’ thing was a big clue, also.”

“How good are you at it?” she asks, immediately followed by, “oh, shit, that was kind of rude, wasn’t it? I’m sorry – I was only wondering, because I heard that some witches can do locating spells? For people and places and items, that sort of thing.”

Pat has literally never heard of anything like that, and it must show on his face, because her expression becomes faintly dismayed. Although she really does do her best to hide it.

“It’s all right,” she’s quick to reassure him, “I’m sure there’s someone else I can contact –”

He shakes his head, equally quickly. “No, no, I’m just – uh, really not that informed on all this. Witch stuff. But there’s probably something like that out there – I have a bunch of books, I’ll probably be able to find something about locating spells. I can check when I get home and let you know.”

“All right,” she says, looking relieved. “...thank you so much for helping out, Pat. Really. This means a lot.”

“No problem,” he says, smiling at her and trying to hide the anxiety he feels. He’s not _good _at being a witch. He’s definitely going to fuck this up. And the worst thing is, she’ll probably be genuinely nice and understanding about it, and what if Griffin’s really in trouble? – he doesn’t say anything like that out loud though. “It’s kind of what I do.”

They exchange goodbyes, and then Rachel awkwardly squirms her way back into the deeper ocean, pulling herself across the sandy shallows on her hands. When she’s deep enough, she waves at him – he waves back, and she slips off into the tide, silver tail flashing.

Pat rejoins the rest of the crew back on the beach, gets utterly thrashed at their fucking nonsense card game, and he really does intend to bring the subject up with Brian later that night – but one thing leads to another, and before he realizes it, he’s in the middle of the stream and there’s just no time for any of that. He decides that, after the stream, that he’s going to let Brian know about his chance meeting with Rachel – and maybe, tomorrow, start trying to work on a scrying spell or whatever he can slam together. It’s a good plan, a solid plan, and he even feels moderately confident that he might be able to pull some semblance of a locating spell off.

...but of course, that’s not what ends up happening – not in the least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come join me on Twitter where i wax eloquent nonsense about Polygon, the McElboys, and my various writing woes. I'm kinda new to the platform so it'd be nice for some company! I'm @not_toofamiliar (private account but honestly i'm almost certainly going to let you follow me i'm lonely)
> 
> Comment moderation's on, if you don't want me to publish your comment just let me know. love u


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for your lovely words of encouragement!! mind them tags

It’s horrifyingly early in the morning when he gets the texts. He and Brian wrapped up their most recent Gill & Gilbert stream a few hours ago – which have really taken off, as a matter of fact; the chat just absolutely _adores _Brian, can’t get enough of him – and are kind of tangled up on the couch together, because apparently neither of them could be bothered to get into anything sensible and comfortable like, you know, an _actual bed. _

The buzzing of his phone on the coffee table wakes Pat up, and has him groaning quietly, wondering who would be trying to get to him so early – spam, maybe? – and contemplating just leaving it until the morning. But for some reason, he finds himself untangling his way out of Brian’s grasp and stretching a hand out as far as he can in order to tug his phone towards him, because – well, just because. Just in case.

See, the thing is that Pat has somehow – despite almost actively trying to keep away from the role – fallen into the kind of general archetype of all-purpose friendly neighbourhood witch. He has no idea what he’s doing whatsoever, but everybody just sort of tends to come to him when they need help for anything tangentially magic-related. Griffin had started it, the asshole, with the whole Justin and the magic tree mystery thing all those months ago; and it had kind of escalated from there – Chelsea dragging him into some sort of ritual near the edge of the forest involving mushrooms and what he deeply suspected was some sort of faerie drug (weirdly pleasant, but also just plain weird), Jenna and Ashley asking him to try to get the local corvid population to stop bugging them in their territory (it hadn’t worked because Pat can’t actually speak bird, but they thanked him for trying anyway), Simone kept asking about various types of potions and herbs (which he’s inevitably started researching despite his protests because apparently he’s just _like that_), and Travis had at one point tried to convince him to help catch fish. Which, just – no. Pat doesn’t especially like hunting, and even if he did, the ocean isn’t a great place for crows anyway. (Travis had sulked a lot about that one, but he had remained resolute. No fish-hunting; not now, not ever.)

It was kind of terrifying at first, because _who let him become the town witch holy shit he’s going to kill everyone he doesn’t know what he’s doing_ but as Sydnee had pointed out at a recent pub quiz night, Pat actually might have a sort of natural aptitude for this sort of thing – _Howl’s Moving Castle _style. (The book, not the movie, although they’re pretty similar and the movie was a more than decent adaptation, and – oh, never mind.) And she’s probably right, because she always is when it comes to this sort of thing. He tends to solve a lot of problems by simply being there, and muddling his way into a solution, and it’s unorthodox but it’s working, and what’s more – he’s actually sort of maybe starting to enjoy it. And what’s more, he’s helping people, and that’s – well. That feels good, actually.

He doesn’t want to risk not being able to help someone who really needs it. If it’s something _serious _and it can’t wait until morning, and he just ignores it, he knows he’s going to feel guilty for the rest of his life.

He manages to get his phone by a fingertip, and drag it over so he can scoop it up and check the messages.

1:01 AM | [Unknown Number]  
help

1:01 AM | [Unknown Number]  
i know i’ts early as shit but i finally managed to chget the phon e this is my only chance (this is griffin btw) i need you here like right now

1:02 AM | [Unknown Number]  
DON’T REPLY PLEASE DON’T REPLY I CAN NOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH

1:03 AM | [Unknown Number]  
THIS IS NOT A GOOF don’t tell trav or juice about this or anyone i just super need backup you’re the only number i could remember

1:03 AM | [Unknown Number]  
please pat i’m serious

Underneath all of that is another message, this one with an address – a place that Pat doesn’t recognize, but when he goes to look it up on Google Maps, it’s like two towns over. Still pretty close to the coast, but a fair distance away. He flicks back to the messages, and rereads them, and grimaces. _Damn it, _thinks Pat, _god fucking damn it all, _but he’s already standing up from the couch and pulling up Google Maps again with one hand while he reaches for his coat, kind of dislodging Brian abruptly and waking him up.

“Mmmmmmfuck what is it?” goes Brian, all sleepy and gangly and shit. He always gets like this post-stream, and Pat knows that well enough to also know that it’s easy to dislodge him and push him back onto the couch.

“Go back to sleep,” he says. “I’ve got a witch thing.”

Brian rolls over anyway, and pulls a ridiculous face as he fumbles to squint at the time on his watch. “At one oh-six in the morning?”

Pat hesitates for maybe a split second, but communication is important, so – “I think – it might be Griffin?”

“Oh _shit._” Brian’s fully awake now, in almost a split second. “Where? What? What’s happening?”

Pat hands him the phone wordlessly, and Brian quickly scans through the messages while Pat pulls on his coat and sneakers and tries to blink away the gunk that’s built itself up in his eyelids. Brian’s expression goes from mildly concerned to _very_ worried in a split second. “_Fuck,_” he says with feeling, jumping up and starting to pace nervously.

“Yep,” agrees Pat, hands hovering over everything and nothing. He has absolutely _no idea whatsoever _what to bring with him. All of the stuff in his witch room is pretty much useless if he needs any sort of instant effect, it’s all the sort of thing that takes a few hours at best and a few months at worst to cause anything to happen – as far as he can manage at the moment, anyway. He bites his lip, and then takes his phone back from Brian. Whatever it is, he’s got to hope that he’ll be able to deal with it, or help Griffin deal with it empty-handed.

“I thought he was on an ocean adventure or some shit,” says Brian, fingers twitching. “What’s he doing all the way over _there?_”

“Fuck if I know,” Pat says. “It could be a joke thing – he could be messing with me? Right?”

Brian shakes his head. “He called no goofs. That’s just about deadly serious in McElroy-speak.”

Pat checks Google Maps quickly, and just about runs to the window to throw it open. There’s a slight breeze tonight, and it ruffles his hair as he stares out into the dim light of _very _early morning and thinks. “Okay, uh – shit. Listen, I know the message said not to call his family, but if I don’t check in with you in, like – an hour, call them anyway.”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Brian asks. “We don’t know what the full situation is. He might have a good reason.”

“He texted me from an unknown number, and he told me not to text back,” Pat says. “That’s – that’s super not a good sign. Means he either stole the phone, or – shit, I don’t know. Point is, this could get bad, and I’d feel better about having backup.”

Brian bobs his head in a quick nod. “Okay, okay. Got it. One hour, call Travis and Justin. And anyone else who can do something.”

Pat checks the route on his phone again, trying to commit the general location of the place in the text to memory, and says, “I’ll try to keep in touch. See you soon. Love you,” he adds, with a smile that feels kind of forced. But the sentiment is genuine.

“Love you too, Pat Gill,” Brian says, returning the small smile, “and good luck.”

Pat takes a step back, and dashes forwards before flinging himself bodily though the open window, flesh and clothes melting all the way down into sleek black feathers and beady eyes and claws in less than a second. He wheels around, curving smoothly through the air, and sees Brian at the window – sees him wave. He lets out a loud caw in response, and flaps up, up, upwards, even as he hears the window click shut behind him.

He rarely goes too high when flying, just because – well, there’s never really much reason to? Although he totally should do it more often, because flying high is _cool _and freeing and tends to give him a much better birds-eyes (heh) view of the surrounding area. Today, he catches the updrafts and early-morning breezes and drifts upwards high enough that the entirety of the tiny town he’s pretty much claimed as his own, at this point, can fit within his field of vision. He can pick out, roughly, where Ashley’s and Jenna’s houses are, and kind of guess where the local pub is, and it’s actually really pretty from up here – tiny houses bordered by that massive forest, with the ocean just nearby. He drifts in a tight circle for a moment, just taking it all in, and then heads off, moving northwards – following the coast, because that’s the easiest way to do it.

He falls into the familiar rhythm of flight easily, and although it takes him nearly twenty minutes to get to the town indicated, his general exhaustion when he finds a quiet back alley to land in is probably more down to the early hour than any physical cause.

He touches down, brushing off the crow’s form and feathers and straightening back into his own, slightly gangly, completely humanoid self, and takes a moment to stretch, and quickly shoots off a text.

1:29 AM | Patrick Gill  
Made it to the town, still alive. Going to find that house now.

1:30 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
cool & good, be careful!

He flicks over to Maps and finds the address – fifteen minutes walk from where he is, according to the app, but probably a lot less if he flies. So he does that, and it ends up taking about five, and in no time he’s double-checking the location just to make sure he got it right because he’s second-guessing himself like crazy right now.

The house looks nice enough – it’s a three-storey in the middle of the town, with large bay windows and a Honda Accord parked in the driveway. It doesn’t look like anything shady’s going on inside in the least, but of course that’s probably not the best indication of anything. Pat’s first instinct is to walk up and knock on the door – ask if Griffin’s home, that sort of thing – but something holds him back, and that something is common sense, because _jesus fucking christ would that be a bad idea for multiple reasons. _

He stands on the sidewalk across from the house, and tries his best not to look like a criminal or stalker or something as he takes in the layout of the house, even though it feels an awful lot like he’s preparing to break into it – casing the joint, or something. It occurs to him that breaking and entering might actually be a thing that he has to do – or not. He has no idea what he’s meant to be doing here, really.

Nobody’s out here on the street right now to see him – or at least he doesn’t _think _anyone’s out here – but he shuffles back into the shadow of a nearby tree to think. The person who would know best what’s going on here is Griffin – so it follows that the first order of business should be to find him. If he’s even here, anyway.

Only one way to find out.

He shrouds himself in feathers, taking flight again, and heads right up to the house – circling the ground floor first, and peering into any windows he can find that aren’t securely curtained-off. Through the few uncovered windows, he sees that the house is dim and dark and normal. It seems like a home where more than one person lives, judging by the chairs and sofas and number of shoes by the door and all that shit, and there’s a bunch of unwashed plates stacked haphazardly in the kitchen sink.

The next floor has even less to look at. The few windows that aren’t blocked from view look into rooms with nothing much in them at all. An unused study, a guest bedroom with an unmade, bare bed. Pat flaps around; tries to get some more information, Holmes-like, from the dim scenes he can make out, but ultimately comes up with nothing.

And that’s fine, because it’s at the top floor that he really hits the jackpot. There’s one window, and the curtains are open which means that when Pat gets a bit closer he realizes that there’s a light actually on inside the room – it’s super dim, which is why he hadn’t clocked it from the ground, but it’s definitely there. He can’t really see anything from his position where he’s hovering around outside, so he hesitates for a second or two before coming to perch on the edge of the windowsill.

The top floor of the house is apparently more of an attic than any actual floor, technically speaking, it’s just one big room with what looks like a set of stairs leading down into the rest of the house. It’s pretty spare – a couple of cardboard boxes stacked and pushed into corners – and a little bedroom-like setup at one end, with a bed and a side-table with a lamp on it and something that barely qualifies as a desk. And sitting on that bed, half-hunched into himself and leaning over something that Pat can’t quite make out, is Griffin McElroy.

There are three thoughts that occur to Pat as soon as he sees Griffin. The first is, _shit, he looks terrible, _because – well, he really does. Even from a short distance, it’s not hard to see that the dude looks flat-out miserable and almost ill-looking too. The way he’s holding himself, it’s like he doesn’t feel comfortable in his own skin. It’s jarring to look at.

Pat’s second thought, leading on from this, is, _wait, he’s not wearing his hoodie._

His _third _thought is, _oh FUCK OH SHIT, where’s his hoodie – **he’s not wearing his hoodie.**_

Before he can even start to process the horrifying implications of this, he throws off his crow form as quickly and quietly as he can; leaving him, the human Patrick Gill, crouched awkwardly on the windowsill, pressing himself against the glass of the window in an attempt not to lose his balance and die. Not wanting to make too much noise, he taps softly at the window, and waves frantically.

At the first tap, Griffin jerks upright, and looks over at the window – Pat waves again and gives him an awkward thumbs-up – and his eyes go all wide and startled behind his glasses. He sweeps up the thing he’s been hunching over with one hand – a battered cheap-looking notebook, apparently? – and just about stumbles over his own feet in his haste to get to the window and pry it carefully, soundlessly, open.

“I could kiss you,” is the first thing he says, voice low and fervent, “I could literally fucking kiss you, Patrick Gill, you are a goddamned _miracle, _you know that?”

Pat swivels, and swings his legs over the inside of the sill – he feels cautious about actually entering the house for some reason, but this is a good way to not fall off backwards. He leans in closer, trying to get a good look at Griffin, who’s only very dimly lit from behind. “Jesus, Griffin, what happened? You disappeared for like a whole _week_, and everyone thought you were exploring – but then I get your text at midnight, and you tell me you’re somehow basically halfway to Eastport – ”

Griffin’s face twists unpleasantly. “It’s – I, look, jeez, Pat. A bunch of stuff happened, and it’s – it’s a whole thing.”

“I don’t –”

The moon passes out from behind a cloud or _something,_ and Pat suddenly can’t speak, because now there’s light illuminating Griffin’s face properly, and it’s – yeah. It really is a whole thing_. _He’s a goddamned mess. His glasses are cracked along the right lens, ever-so-slightly. There’s a few bruises on his neck, finger-prints trailing down past his collar, and his face looks pale and ghostly with shadows.

“Yeah,” says Griffin, that unpleasant self-deprecating smile still on his face. “Things are... _not _great here in Griffintown. If I’m being, like, completely honest here? I’m in hell. I’m actually in hell.”

“Where’s your hoodie?” Pat says, already dreading the answer.

Griffin huffs out a laugh that’s pretty much emotionless and just 100% exhausted. “_Hoo _boy,” he says. “Okay, so you know that all those fuckin’ selkie myths and stories that’re all just, like, some human dude steals a selkie lady’s skin so he can kidnap her and hook up with her and make her marry him in a totally non-consensual and creepy-ass way that’s somehow still framed as ridiculously romantic?”

“Oh, god,” says Pat.

“Yep,” says Griffin. That smile remains on his face, but it looks even more forced than before. “It’s me. I’m the selkie bride.”

Pat thinks about how everyone had just assumed Griffin was off on some sort of inspiration-gathering adventure in the ocean, had somehow just lost track of time or something. Thinks about Rachel’s obvious worry and anxiety over her boyfriend, and how he’d just kind of brushed it off. Thinks about Griffin. Trapped in this house with nobody except the person who had fucking _stolen his skin and dragged him here._ Griffin, here, for _a full week._

“Who the hell did this?” he says, trying to keep his voice low and calm, but maybe not entirely succeeding, because Griffin gives him a pointed look and raises a finger to his lips. He tries to bring down the volume a tad more, and hisses, low and angry, “seriously, who the _fuck _does this house belong to, I’m _going to scratch out their goddamned eyes_.”

Pat’s not really a violent person by nature – like, at all. He’d usually label himself as a complete pacifist. Also, he doesn’t claim to be an expert on selkies or any sort of magical beings, as a general rule – but he knows enough about them to know that so much as touching a selkie’s skin without consent is the _ultimate_ no-no. And then there’s the bruises. And the cracked glasses. And Pat’s a pacifist, sure, but he will absolutely, without question, throw hands for the sake Griffin McElroy, who is maybe one of the nicest and most genuine people he’s ever met in his life and who has an unearthly tolerance for listening to him dump his dumbass gay shit on him and who is just about the last person in the word that deserves _any _of this crap.

Griffin’s shaking his head, though. “Listen, Pat, I appreciate the thought and all, but – whatever you’re thinking, it’s a super bad idea. The guy who grifted my skin – the dude’s a sorcerer. You are _crazy _underprepared for fighting him.”

“He’s a fucking _what –_ no, you know what? Forget it. I refuse to be surprised by any of this anymore.”

Griffin almost smiles properly. Almost. “I keep forgetting, you’re still new. Uh, fucking – you know witches, right, you guys have, like, innate, in-built magic? Sorcerers, human ones, anyway – they’re different. They tend to have some sort of magical implant or energy stone thing put inside of them, so they get the magic and power and all that from there.”

Pat winces. “Sounds unpleasant.”

“Oh, it’s risky as _shit, _dude. And super unstable if you don’t know what you’re doing. Which, uh.” His eyes dart quickly to the staircase leading downstairs, and then back to Pat. “This guy... doesn’t.”

Pat releases a breath, and says, “all right, so if I’m not fighting a sorcerer for your honour – what then?”

“You’re going to need to –” Griffin starts, but before he can continue, there’s a sharp noise from downstairs – a door slamming open. They both jump a little.

“Babe, I know you’re awake,” calls a distant voice, one floor down. “Who the hell’re you talking to up there?”

_Shit, _mouths Pat. Griffin shakes his head, and grimaces, and then calls back, “just talking to myself, sorry!”

“I call bullshit,” the guy yells, and then there’s footsteps in the hallway and on the stairs. Pat nearly falls out of the window in his effort to get his crow form together, as Griffin whirls around, straightening up and blocking the view to the window – apparently trying to give him some cover just in case he can’t transform in time.

He manages it, though, just as the shadowy form of a moderately tall man ascends the stairs, flipping on the actual overhead light switch to the attic room. Pat deliberates quickly over where to go – not sure if sorcerers can sense magic and witches in the same way that a lot of his friends seem to be able to – and settles on quickly fluttering away from the window and to a nearby tree. He perches on a branch, and tries to act like an actual crow that’s sleeping or something, all the while keeping an unwavering watch on the scene inside the house through the still-open window.

From this distance, he can’t hear what they’re saying, although he can guess the gist. The guy’s just some white dude, nothing really special – nothing to look at. He’s wearing a loose t-shirt and sweatpants, and he looks angry. Griffin looks blank; sort of icy, really – he’s responding to whatever the guy’s saying calmly but there’s an undercurrent of tension there. And then they’re having some sort argument. Griffin’s obviously trying not to antagonize him, but it’s pretty obvious that the guy _wants _to pick a fight – wants to be angry at him.

Griffin says something, and the guy’s hand moves blindingly fast, and then suddenly Griffin’s reeling back, a hand to his face, which is now red with the force of the strike. Pat twitches, but barely manages to restrain himself from moving. And then, just as quickly as the slap had occurred – that sudden angry flash of violence – something changes and he’s kissing him, and it’s just fucking _awful_. Worse than the slap. Pat is about to snap the branch he’s sitting on in two from the sheer strength of how hard he’s gripping onto it with his claws.

They break apart after a few seconds – well, Griffin’s barely moving and barely responding, so it’s more the other guy, and then things get worse somehow, because now the dude’s draping himself all over Griffin and saying stuff that can’t be PG-rated.

Pat feels sick. Griffin’s words from so many months ago come floating back to him – _everyone thinks seals are cute – _but suddenly they don’t seem so funny anymore – none of it does. He thinks about all the jokes he and Brian have made about literally everyone being thirsty for Griffin – every little comment about Griffin literally being too goddamned gorgeous for this earth, every throwaway remark from any one of Pat’s friends along the lines of ‘_oh yeah, I’d fuck him in an instant if he asked’. _It’s true, there’s something otherworldly and alluring about Griffin, but it’s _normal _back in their town, it’s something that everyone they know just kind of accepts as normal, and never acts on. _Brian can turn into a tree, Chels makes the best damn drinks out of everyone we know, Griffin’s cute and very bangable, these are the facts of life. _The thought of anyone outside their little weird adopted friend-family circle making a comment like that is just _wrong._ Griffin is untouchable, sacred. He’s got a razor-sharp and delightfully weird sense of humour, an endless range of increasingly bizarre voices for characters that don’t exist yet, a disdainful glare that’s so powerful it could knock a guy down at twenty paces, and a sparkle that enters his words when he’s feeling genuinely sentimental or affectionate that just sort of makes your heart explode. This isn’t right. This isn’t _fair._

And right this moment, he’s frozen stiff with tension, staring out the window blankly as some _complete freak_ of a human being wraps arms around his body from behind, fondling and nuzzling at him with a false approximation of familiarity and tenderness that makes Pat want to just scream and scream and never stop. Griffin’s eyes say, _stop watching this now, I don’t want anyone to see this,_ and Pat knows that the message is meant for him, but he just can’t. If he stops watching, it means that it never happened, because Griffin’s a good enough actor that he won’t let the slightest of hints drop, later on, that this situation or anything like it ever occurred. Someone else needs to know. It’s not what Griffin wants. It’s not even what _he _wants. But nonetheless, he watches as the man peppers kisses up and down Griffin’s neck, and mutters things that Pat can’t hear and doesn’t want to hear, and fucking _touches _him and it’s _bad, okay. _

After what seems like hours but is probably closer to five or ten minutes, the guy kisses Griffin again – on the _lips_, on the goddamned _lips _and it looks like he’s trying to force some tongue too, oh god – and says something to him. Griffin says something unenthusiastic and indistinct in return, and the guy retreats down the stairs once more, and Griffin just basically falls onto the bed, like his strings have been completely cut. He looks exhausted and tense and _so, so _uncomfortable on every conceivable level, but after a second, he looks up and out the window, and nods in Pat’s direction.

Pat wastes no time in swooping downwards, towards the house. This time, he doesn’t both perching on the window. He flies directly in, and unfolds himself into his human form in the middle of the room.

“Scratching his eyes out is definitely still on the table,” he says, voice tight with anger. “So is maiming. And punching. And also kicking. Just so you know.”

Griffin just shakes his head, straightening his glasses. The crack in the glass is deeper now, more pronounced, and there’s a bruise forming on his cheek. A hand-shaped bruise. “Drop it, Gill,” he says, and he sounds so quiet and defeated that Pat does, without question.

“Do you know him? Who even _is _he?” Pat asks instead.

“His fucking _name,_” says Griffin – suddenly incandescently angry, practically spitting out the words – “isn’t fucking worth speaking aloud_._ God, he _sucks. _He’s – he’s infamous, kinda, in the magical water folk community, ‘specially selkies. Infamous for being a piece of absolute _shit._” He scrubs a hand across his face, sighing, and – at Pat’s apparently vaguely startled expression, says – “yeah – uh, it’s generally – people try to stay away from this town, it’s got some real bad juju. Not just him, there’s, like, a cult a few blocks down – never mind. Basically, his magic implant or whatever, it has this thing where he’s gotta keep it powered from other sources, and I _guess _he could just do it from the earth or a magic spring or whatever the _fuck _but _nooooo_ he chooses to kidnap whatever poor moron stumbles into his territory by accident and _fuck. _Guess that poor moron is _me _this week_._”

“He stole your skin to, what, drain power from you?” Pat asks, trying to parse Griffin’s ramble. “And – and he’s. He’s sexually assaulting you because you can’t do anything about it. Because he’s got your skin. Because he’s a piece of shit who thinks you’re hot.” He wants to throw up. He really does. He tries to keep his face blank but he knows it’s not working, not really. “Jesus. _Jesus fuck._”

“Pretty much_,_” says Griffin, and sighs again. “You guys were right, sort of, I was going north to do some research for – a thing. Fuck. It doesn’t even matter, I guess. I got sloppy – didn’t realize that the town I stopped in was the danger zone, and I was taking a break on the beach – stretching the old legs, you know – and he just _jumped _me, and he had my skin, and I couldn’t – I couldn’t –” He shudders spasmodically, eyes going glassy and wide, and then his gaze sharpens, and he looks over at Pat. “Pat. Patrick, buddy, listen, you’ve _got _to find my skin.”

“Yeah, of course,” says Pat. “But how?”

“He wants me downstairs in five minutes,” Griffin says with a little grimace. It basically goes without saying _why._

“_God. _Can’t you just, not go?”

“No, not really_,_” Griffin says. “It’s the – fuckin’, uh – thrall? Geas? Mojo? Whatever you wanna call it. He’s got my skin, so he calls the shots, and I can’t really do much about it. Which is why you _need to find it._ I’ll – well, I’ll be keeping him busy, which is kind of –” He shudders again, and Pat wants to hug him, but it’s really not the time and plus he probably doesn’t even want to touch anyone right now, Pat definitely wouldn’t want to if it was him in his place. “– the perfect distraction, huh? I’ll stall as long as I can,” he adds.

“Cool, cool-cool, but uh, where the hell am I meant to be looking?” Pat asks.

Griffin laughs, it’s more like a bark. “Patrick, my man – if I knew that, I’d be out of here already.” The laugh cuts off abruptly, and he says, “second floor, probably, he told me I’m not allowed in any of the rooms except his.”

“Second floor. Find your hidden skin.” Pat presses his lips together tightly. It seems like an impossible task from where he’s standing, but he’d never get anywhere if he didn’t start trying. “Got it.”

“Good.” Griffin rises from the bed, and claps Pat on the arm, but then he doesn’t remove his hand from there for a full ten seconds. “Seriously. Thanks.”

_Don’t thank me yet, I’ve still got to find the damn thing, _he thinks. What he says aloud is, “of course.”

Griffin’s hand lingers on his arm for another moment, and then he seems to force himself to pry it away. Without another word, he adjusts his glasses, lets the slightest of grimaces pass over his face, and then heads over to the stairs. Pat hears Griffin’s bare feet padding down the staircase and then down the hallway below. The footsteps stop. A door clicks open. Words are exchanged, too soft for him to hear, and then footsteps again, and the door closes.

He swallows that sick feeling again, waits a minute just to be sure – and then, as quietly as he can possibly manage, he goes skin-hunting.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy here we go here we GO

The rooms on the second floor aren’t locked, probably because they don’t need to be. This has disturbing implications about the nature of the selkie skin magic that Pat really doesn’t want to dwell on right now, so he doesn’t – he just gets to looking. He goes to the door furthest away from where the distant sounds of voices are, and just starts ransacking the place. But like, really quietly. The rooms that he goes in are pretty empty, for the most part, so it’s not like there’s a lot of places to look – some drawers, some cupboards – but there’s no hoodie in sight. He does check for hidden compartments (of course he does, what sort of person would he be if he _didn’t_) but either he’s not looking hard enough or this guy has absolutely no sense of style, which would definitely not surprise him in the least.

By the time he’s halfway through the hallway closet – taking each item out carefully, searching through everything with the light from his phone, trying not to make any sound at all – he realizes that this is going to take too long. The more time he spends painstakingly searching every location that so much as _looks _like it could house Griffin’s skin, the more time Griffin has to spend in that room. With that guy. There’s _got _to be a better way to do this.

_All right_, he thinks to himself_, if I was trying to hide a selkie skin from its owner, where would I put it? _And the immediate conclusion he draws from that is,_ nowhere, because I’d never fucking do that, Jesus Christ, _which isn’t at all helpful to him or this situation or _any _of this_._

He revises the question. _If I was trying to hide a selkie skin in a three-storey upper-middle-class suburban house, and I was an evil asshole sorcerer with creepy awful possessive tendencies, where would I put it? Please summarize with a short, succinct response, 50 words or less, answers must be submitted now please if you want your friend to get the fuck out of this out as soon as possible. _

He gets a few hits back on this one – under the floorboards under my bed, in a locked safe somewhere, buried out under a tree in the backyard where nobody would ever think of looking under any circumstances...

...this also isn’t helpful, he realizes, and once again, there’s just _got _to be a better way to do this. And also, he really hopes that this guy isn’t nearly as creative as he is with selkie skin hiding places.

He starts putting the hallway closet back in order, and as he does, he remembers something – remembers Rachel mentioning that some witches can do locating spells, back at the beach. ‘For people and places and items’, her exact words had been. And he _had _remembered reading about something like that, once, and had absolutely one hundred percent intended to look it up in the morning, but circumstances had intervened and he’d never got around to doing that. Which really is a pity, because a convenient object-locating spell seems like exactly the sort of thing he could do with right this moment.

He shuts the closet door as quietly as he can, ducks back into the nearest open room – some sort of study – and tries to think magic-y thoughts. Apparently magic is innate for witches. He’s never really put all too much thought into it before, but if he can just get something right, then he can get Griffin out of here, and –

And then there’s something there. Something wavering – kind of, sort of, it’s hard to explain but it’s, like – _inside _him? He can’t touch it physically, but he can _touch _it. He doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t know why it’s there, but this seems like a magic thing. It’s probably a magic thing.

“Oh, jeez,” he mutters to himself, and then pulls hesitantly at a thin thread of energy that he apparently hadn’t noticed until now. It seems to take the strain, and as he continues tugging at it, he finds that it’s becoming thicker, more noticeable, until he runs out of slack and there’s no longer any thread – just a warm glow in his chest now, a kind of thrumming of magic that he recognizes vaguely from that spark of brilliance that blooms in him whenever he transforms into a crow, from the feeling of being near the heart of a forest. It’s oddly reassuring, having it there. There’s only one problem. He has absolutely no idea what to do with it.

He tries pushing it out through his fingers or his eyes or something, but it doesn’t seem to want to actually move. It just stays where it is – within him, pulsing and glowing, a weird magical ball of plasma under his skin. He tries manipulating it – thinking about forming it into different shapes, but it just doesn’t respond to that sort of thing, apparently.

“_Ugh,_” he says softly to himself, and considers checking WikiHow on his phone – maybe there’s a secret category for witches who have no idea what they’re doing? – but there’s no time for that. “Okay, shit, I need to – I need to find Griffin’s skin. How do I do that?”

Weirdly, the buzz in his chest seems to respond to his words. It kind of lifts upwards, to the top of his ribcage, and thrums rhythmically. He pauses, and then repeats, hesitantly, “I need to find Griffin’s sealskin?” It happens again, more insistently this time, and Pat realizes that he might be onto something. “Find Griffin’s sealskin,” he says, more confidently, and then it’s not so much a thrum as a tug that guides him to his feet, and starts pulling him out of the room he’s in, and down the hallway. “Shit!” he exclaims, as quietly as he can, and does his best to keep up with that adamant pull. So, apparently magic can respond to verbal intent? That’s a thing now? He wonders if this is a normal thing or if it’s just a him thing, and makes a mental note to ask the group chat about it when he gets a chance, but he quickly dismisses it because now the magic is pulling him towards a new door, and it takes a whole lot of effort to just get it to slow down a second so he can check that he’s not walking into the room that Griffin and – the other guy – are in right now, by accident. He isn’t, that’s good. He tugs open the door as quietly as he can, and follows the pull inside.

It’s a pretty bare room, mostly-empty bookshelves with a few scattered books, and no hiding places at all where someone could keep a selkie skin concealed from prying eyes. Pat’s in the process of thinking something like, _well, that didn’t work, _when a sudden downwards jolt from the magic tracking system brings him to his knees with a louder-than-is-strictly-helpful _bump. _His hands are now firmly pressed against the floorboards. He takes a moment to ascertain that nobody’s heard him – or, well, one person in particular – but there doesn’t seem to have been any notice. It takes him another moment to realize why the magic has pulled him _here_ in particular, and when it does hit him, he’s scrabbling around on the ground for any sort of hidden mechanism or trapdoor that will let him get to where the skin’s hidden. His fingernails catch on a slightly raised floorboard, and in no time at all, he’s prising them up to reveal a makeshift hidden compartment, and this is definitely some _Tell-tale Heart _shit right here. There’s a few ziplock bags with money in them, a notebook or two, some other scattered miscellaneous items that were apparently important enough to hide – and underneath them, a very familiar hoodie.

He brushes aside all the other items to carefully scoop the hoodie up, and the moment his fingers touch the fabric, he feels a very intense surge of that electric magic feeling, and _god damn _this thing is just seething with magic, isn’t it? And it feels just like Griffin, too; weird as that is – if Pat were more prone to metaphors and weird sentimental bullshit, he would swear that he’s holding a piece of Griffin’s soul right now. It’s all energy and tongue-in-cheek humour and creativity, and it’s exhilarating, and Pat feels kind of dirty just holding it – it feels wrong. This should be in Griffin’s hands, not his, he feels like he’s intruding in something deeply personal.

He tucks it carefully under one arm, kicks the floorboards roughly back into place, pauses for a second, and then pushes them aside again so he can steal all the money he can get his gay little hands on. Petty, yeah, but if petty’s the most he can do here tonight he’s definitely going to settle for it. He stuffs the ziplock bags of money into his pockets, pauses for only a moment as he wonders what to do, and then throws open the door to the room he’s in and just yells, “_GRIFFIN_,” at the top of his lungs.

He hears, from a few room down, a loud bang, like someone’s just smashed their elbow into a wall by accident, and then a, “who the hell is that?”, followed instantly by Griffin’s loud, distinctive – slightly hysterical at this moment – laughter, and a, “_Griffin no wait what who the hell is that?_” and then, a loud _thump, _a yell of pain, running footsteps, and the _slam _of a door being thrown open. Then Griffin’s running, full-pelt, down the hallway – right towards him. His t-shirt is on backwards, and he’s dishevelled and barefoot and there’s still his cracked glasses and the bruise on his face, but he’s seen his hoodie under Pat’s arm. His eyes are shining and his knuckles are glistening red and there’s a vindictive little grin on his face as he practically slams into the railing of the staircase leading downstairs to halt his momentum, and he screams over his shoulder, “_eat my entire ass, you son of a bitch!_” and then to Pat, as he starts down the stairs without even taking his hoodie back, “come on, Gill, _go go go!_”

And then they’re running down the stairs together and weaving their way through the ground floor of this awful terrible house. Griffin knows his way around better than Pat does, so he lets him take the lead. They rocket through the lounge room, through the kitchen, and then to the hallway leading to the front door, and all the while there’s thundering footsteps and swearing and bellowing following them as they’re pursued by the house’s owner.

“Get back here, you little _bitch,_” comes the yell from too-close behind them as they finally reach the front door. There’s an alarming crackle of ozone that makes Pat’s hair stand on end, and it’s only instinct that keeps his head from getting fried – makes him dodge sideways to avoid the massive, terrifying bolt of pure energy that’s just been flung at the two of them. Griffin dodges neatly too, pressing himself into the opposite wall, and the energy goes soaring past and hits the front door, lighting up the hallway with this terrible radioactive green glow and energy that just feels bad and wrong, like someone’s just kicked a million puppies. Pat looks back, and sees that the motherfucker of the evening has two more of those energy bolts – one cupped in each hand, and is snarling, outright snarling – there’s something acidic and glowing green bubbling in the back of his throat, too. There’s a bruise welling up across his face, and his nose appears to be broken if the blood it’s dripping is anything to go by. It’s pure nightmare fuel. Pat looks at Griffin, and Griffin looks at Pat, and then Griffin makes the executive decision to run forward and kick the goddamn door down, and he grabs Pat’s hand, or Pat grabs his hand, or some weird combination of the two, and then they’re running again. Down the driveway, past the car parked in it, and onto the street. Another lightning bolt of sickening energy barely misses them.

“God, this sucks,” Griffin pants, dragging Pat along behind him, “this sucks _ass._”

“Shut up and _run,_” Pat pants back, trying to catch up. His legs are longer, sure, but Griffin’s got nervous angry pent-up energy from being stuck inside for _days_, and Pat hasn’t gone to the gym for a very long time. He manages to catch up enough so that they’re now running side by side, takes the opportunity to shove Griffin’s sealskin back into his hands. “Here. Yours.”

Griffin’s eyes almost literally sparkle as soon as he’s got it back in his hands, although that could just be the moonlight reflecting off his half-shattered glasses, and – still running – he throws the hoodie over his shoulders neatly, slipping his arms into the sleeves, and he makes a noise of relief. “Fuck yeah, that’s more like it,” he begins, and then another bolt of energy rockets past them, impacting with the ground only a few feet away. This bolt is different, Pat notices, not just in colour, but in feel, too. It feels... nasty. There’s no other word for it. There is some seriously bad juju going on with this new magic, and he doesn’t know what it is – he just knows that getting hit by it would be just super capital-B Bad, and he shouldn’t let it happen under any circumstances. Nicely vague, but magic always tends to be.

It hasn’t escaped his attention that the guy’s focus has shifted from ‘get Griffin back’ to ‘aim to kill’, and that... yeah, that disturbs him. A bit. A lot. But there’s no time to unpack that right now. They’re running through the main town now, past closed-up shops and stores and houses, and the noise that they’re making – well, mainly their pursuer’s making – is almost certainly going to wake _somebody _up, and bring whatever sort of police outfit this town’s got running. Pat doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not, and hopes that he won’t need to deal with it. Griffin had mentioned a cult. He doesn’t want to have to deal with a cult.

“Where are we going, what’s the plan?” he gasps at Griffin, who seems to know what he’s doing, weirdly enough. He’s moving with direction and purpose and really Pat’s just along for the ride.

“I’m going to the ocean,” Griffin says, “it’s not too far from here – soon as I get into the water, I’m fucking home free ba_by_, he can’t get me if he tries! _You_,” he punctuates the word with a shove to Pat’s shoulder, “you’re going to get up in the air. Like, right now. He’s here for me, to fuck _me _up – he’s not going to care about some crow flying off to wherever.” He sees the look on Pat’s face, and says, “_now, _Patrick!”

“I’m not just gonna leave you here –” and then there’s another explosion of that bad _wrong _magic even closer, and they both realize that they’re not moving nearly fast enough, caught up as they are in their argument, and they simultaneously shut up for a brief moment or two as they speed up. Pat is gasping louder than he really wants to be, and there’s a stitch in his chest that’s stabbing and burning, but he refuses to let Griffin get any further ahead than he’s going. “ – I’m not leaving until you’re in the fucking ocean, McElroy, and I see you swimming off myself – _he is trying to murder you aren’t you paying attention!_”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh, we’ll both get murdered, sounds like a real cool plan!” Griffin yells back. “Cool and fun! I bet ol’ Brian’s going to love hearing about _that _later – ”

Pat feels it coming even before he twists around and sees that electric red energy streaming right towards them – no, right towards Griffin. And – _oh fuck no - _ it’s like time slows right down to a crawl. Griffin’s running, eyes fixed ahead, he hasn’t even noticed it yet, and he’s not going nearly fast enough to outrun the energy. Pat’s a few steps behind despite his best efforts, which gives him... an opportunity. Not a great opportunity, but the _right _one.

Time resumes, and Pat – in a split-second of adrenaline-fueled stupidity and heroism – _lunges, _hands outstretched, and just shoves Griffin as far out of the way of the magic bolt as he can manage, and he hears Griffin stumble and swear and go, “Patrick, what the _fuck_,” but he’s got bigger things on his mind than Griffin being mildly annoyed with him at the moment. Things like how every inch of his body feels like it’s literally on fire, and being torn up in a food processer sped up to six thousand percent, and also being dragged in opposite directions across the expanse of the entire universe. And every brain cell that he’s got is currently dedicated to yelling at him how unnatural and _wrong _the energy coursing through him is, and he’s so very _AWARE _of how this magic, this magic that’s slamming its way up against his own; it’s so ANGRY and WILD and HORRIBLE and it’s just HATE HATE HATE and COME BACK I NEED YOU I NEED YOU –

(Griffin had been absolutely right when he had said that this particular brand of magic was unstable, because oh boy there’s pretty much no other word to describe it even though _unstable _is the understatement of the century. Trying to get a hold on it is like trying to gather the pieces of a sandcastle as the waves wash it away. It’s wild and out of control and intensely emotional, and the emotions behind it are the actual worst – all twisted thoughts and possessiveness and just this unrelenting unending energy with intent to _destroy _and speaking of which:)

– Pat screams, and his legs give out, and he’s on the bitumen with the ground scraping at his knees as he thrashes, hands tearing at his hair and at his mind, get it out get it out _get it out – _Pat screams. Someone else is screaming too, yelling, more like, but the tone is more angry than anything else. There is a hand on his shoulder, and that burns too, burns like the magic ripping at his very essence does. Pat screams. The red fire has wrapped itself around his chest and is squeezing him tight in some awful parody of an embrace, but see here’s the thing here’s the thing, even through the agony that’s consuming him, Pat can feel that this magic leads somewhere, it’s still connected to someone other than him, and that feeling is what makes him reach out on instinct, and take hold of the magic, tugging it tight, pulling it as hard as he can manage until it’s tensed and taut like a stretched-out spring. Pat screams. Letting go of it as it is now would break him, absolutely and completely, he knows that – it’s too firmly entangled in his body, and if he released it now, it’d just rebound on him and he’d fucking die – but he’s got a vague idea of what he can do that might work as a loophole. It’s not concrete but he doesn’t fucking know what he’s doing ever anyway so what’s one more wild idea?

“No, _you,_” he manages to hiss from between gritted teeth. He tugs the red burning rope, pulling it tight one more time for good measure, and then he takes the deepest breath he can manage and he shifts, _hard_. Flesh melts to feathers and fingers to claws in a second, and as he sheds his human form, he feels the magic snap right off him, whipping away like a broken rubber band and leaving him limp and exhausted on the road, wings twitching slightly. He can’t even so much as move. From behind him, he feels a surge of magical backlash, and then a screech from the sorcerer chasing them, and then an outright _scream _that he hopes (somewhat vindictively) is just as loud and agonized as his had been.

Griffin is in front of him in an instant, leaning down to look at him and looking startled and just a bit awed. “Did _you_ do that – no.” He cuts himself off. “Never mind, we don’t have time for – Patrick, can you get up or fly or whatever? We gotta _go._”

Pat can’t even shake his head. (Jesus Christ that whole magic thing must have taken more out of him that he’d thought.) Griffin huffs out a worried, impatient noise, and then just reaches out and scoops him up – surprisingly neatly and gently – from the ground and into his arms. “I gotcha, Gill,” he says, tosses a quick glance over his shoulder, and then he’s running. Pat feels small and vulnerable in a way that he hasn’t ever felt before, and it’s not just because he’s currently a crow who just got struck by a whole bunch of nasty soul-rotting magic. Nestled as he is, right up next to Griffin’s chest, he can feel his heart pounding wildly, and can feel every jolt and bump as they dash down the street and through the town. Behind them – receding rapidly into the distance – the sorcerer is still screaming.

And then Pat basically blinks and they’re at the beach. He’s pretty sure that he’s lost some time, but he can’t exactly pinpoint when the blackout started and where it ended. The thought should disturb hm, he knows, but he’s too out of it to put much thought into it.

Griffin’s clambering over the rocks leading up to the edge of the ocean, hissing as they dig into his feet, and holding Pat tightly to him like he’s afraid Pat’s going to evaporate cleanly through his fingers if he doesn’t. He’s muttering something to himself that Pat can’t quite catch. They reach where the rocks meet the waterline, and Griffin slides down to sit on the edge of a particularly large and sturdy one. Patrick zones again, and comes back (hopefully only a few seconds later) to Griffin shaking him and rambling at him with an undertone of absolute terror to his voice.

“Come on, Patrick, come on,” he’s saying, brushing at Pat’s feathers. “Don’t do this to me – come _on_, Pat. If you die here, Brian’s gonna fucking murder me and barbeque my entire dick – _shit._”

Pat blinks twice at him, tries to flap a wing, and, when that doesn’t work, lets out a weak, throttled-sounding croak. He can only guess how pathetic he must sound – and how it’s probably nothing compared to how pathetic he _feels._

Griffin doesn’t seem to think so, though, because his entire face just flat-out lights up with relief the moment he sees that Pat’s not dead. He curls over in some weird approximation of a hug – loose enough that he doesn’t crush Pat, but close enough that Pat can feel the warmth seeping into him. “Thank _fuck._ You scared me there for a moment, you –” he withdraws and, abruptly, he seems to undergo a complete personality shift, “_complete idiot. _You utter goddamn_ moron. _Do you _literally _have feathers for brains or is there nothing there in that empty avian skull of yours, why the _fuck _would you take that hit, that was for _me._” He looks genuinely distressed. “I swear to god, you try that again and I’m going to kick your ass, your entire ass, that was the literal stupidest worst thing I’ve ever seen anyone do and I’ve seen my dad put _butter on a Pop-Tart –_”

Pat wants to object, but he can’t do anything as he is – doesn’t have the chance to so much as twitch a wing, because it’s at that moment that the air goes electric and sharp around them, like they’ve abruptly entered the eye of a particularly vicious storm – even Pat, in his weakened, barely-able-to-move state, can feel it. Griffin can too, evidentially, because he tenses up, and says, “he’s coming.” He doesn’t need to specify who _he _is. He looks down at Pat, and a whole range of emotions go sliding over his face. “Shit. We need to get out of here, and – fuck, okay, are you _sure _you can’t fly off? Or even just flip yourself back to human?”

If Pat was a bit more bipedal than he is currently, he would have laughed. As it is, he just barely manages to shake his head. Switching back to a humanoid form doesn’t require much magic at all, but he doesn’t have _any _at the moment. A neat combination of the red magic throttling him from the inside out, and flipping that same magic back onto the asshole who’d cast it at him has dried him out like a creek.

He blinks again. At some point, Griffin must have set him down carefully on the rocks, because he’s now lying on his side getting blasted by seaspray, and he feels horribly exposed and cold.

“I can’t just leave you here,” Griffin is muttering to himself, “god, he’d fuckin’ murder you. Shit. _Shit, _okay, I –” he whirls back to Pat, pauses, and then says, “I have a way out of this, fair warning, it’s going to be shitty in a major way,” and then just starts stripping. Straight-up starts tugging his sweatpants off hurriedly, before tossing them aside, and then he takes his hoodie off too and bundles it up tightly, tucking it firmly under his knees as he tugs off the shirt he’s wearing too and tosses that aside as well. Pat averts his eyes, because as much as he would love to see Griffin naked, it would have to be under completely different circumstances, such as them a) not being on a beach at 2 AM with a mad sorcerer hunting them down and b) him not being a unwilling crow and c) Griffin not maybe being traumatized by whatever the fuck went down back in that guy’s house, because Pat didn’t miss how his fingers were shaking in those brief few moments when he was looking.

Griffin grabs him, and Pat – having been lost in thought and not really paying attention – lets out a weak, startled squawk. Griffin goes _shush _at him, and holds him up so they’re face-to-face. Face-to-beak. It’s weird, because Griffin’s obviously trying hard not to hurt him although it’s pretty clear that he has no idea how to hold a bird (and actually come to think of it neither does he) and Pat’s pretty floppy and uncoordinated at the moment so he’s not being much help but also? He just feels _numb_. He suspects that even if Griffin _did_ manage to hurt him – break a bird bone or whatever – he probably wouldn’t feel a thing. And that’s probably not a good sign, come to think of it.

“Patrick, come on, work with me here,” Griffin says, softly but sharply, dragging him back into reality. He realizes he zoned out for like a full ten second there, and does his best to work out what’s going on. Griffin’s almost entirely clothingless now, he’s taken off those cracked glasses and is wearing his hoodie and that’s literally it, which means – wait, what the fuck does that mean?

“I’m gonna go seal, and you’re coming with me,” Griffin explains, which is a stupid plan, and Pat would articulate as much if he actually had the physical capacity to talk. He continues, saying, “so obviously this plan isn’t _perfect _–” yeah, agreed, incredible powers of critical thinking there, McElroy – “– but it’s the best we’ve got. You, on my back, dig your claws in as hard as you can – actually please not too hard – fuck, nope, better safe than sorry, get ‘em in there. I’ll swim us somewhere safe, we’ll figure out what to do when we’re as far as we can get away from this bastard. Sound good?”

It does not sound good. Pat hates this plan a lot. Griffin seems to get that, and he just shakes his head.

“We’ve got like a minute until he catches up,” he says – and yeah, now that he mentions it, Pat can feel that prickling discomfort writhing underneath his feathers, signifying that the Bad Magic is approaching, and fast. “It’s now or never. You ready?”

Pat approximates a nod, and Griffin lifts him up, guiding him to the upper back part of his hoodie, just below where the actual hood part is. It takes a few tries, but eventually he manages to get a solid grip on the fabric, and from there, on Griffin’s actual flesh. Weirdly, the hiss of pain that Griffin lets out happens when Pat pierces through the fabric of the hoodie rather than his actual _skin, _which – is lowkey disturbing, actually, and raises a lot of questions that he doesn’t have the time or energy to unpack. Quickly, Pat manages to figure out how to keep holding on even without Griffin’s hands to support him, and it’s a bit shaky but it’ll do.

“Ar’ight,” says Griffin, wincing slightly. He hasn’t complained yet about the stabbing pain in his back, not directly, which is nice of him. He takes a step towards the roaring ocean, and then charges forwards into the spray and foam, cutting a clean path through the shallow water and heading for the inky blackness. As he runs, he flips up the hood of his jacket, and tugs the hem of it down – both practiced, elegant motions that he’s obviously done a million times before.

“Deep breath, Gill,” he advises, voice barely audible above the sound of the early-morning waves, and then he shoves both his hands into his hoodie pockets, sucks in a inhumanly long breath of air, and just fucking leaps upwards, eight fucking feet _straight up into the air_. Pat would be screaming if he could, but as it is, he just takes that suggested deep breath and waits for impact. As he does – time seems to slow again – he notices that the hoodie is changing form, becoming larger and more form-fitting and thick and blubbery. His claws are still stuck right into it, but there’s no layer of fabric separating him and actual meaty flesh, and it looks even more painful now. And Griffin’s human form is all but gone, he’s just completely seal now. Smooth grey skin with a touch of fur to it, powerful muscled tail thrashing at the air, tiny adorable paw-fin things, what are they called – flippers, that’s it – and Pat can see just a hint of whiskers from where he is. It’s a remarkably smooth transformation, all things considered – he would have thought that a human-to-seal shift would look a lot more awkward, really.

And then time’s back on track again. Griffin hits the ocean with an almighty splash, and immediately starts ploughing through the water at breakneck speeds, and all Pat can do is hold on tight and try to lean into the current so he doesn’t accidentally snap his neck or lose his grip. On Griffin or reality, he’s not quite sure. Griffin’s swimming like it’s the fucking Selkie Olympics of 2019 and he’s determined to break every record possible for cross-country early morning swimming. It’s terrifying. He breaches the surface every now and then so that Pat can take in a brief gasp of air but the dude’s just not stopping.

Crows aren’t fucking _meant _for the ocean. He’s still got a death grip on Griffin’s blubbery seal back, but that’s about all he’s got going for him. He can’t keep his eyes open. He’s just exhausted on every level possible, and his poor overtaxed crow brain decides, yeah, this is just about a good point to shut down and leave everything else up to fate despite the overwhelming logic that, if he could focus on it, would probably insist that staying awake and cognizant of his surroundings is definitely the better idea. But logic is for people that haven’t gotten into an impromptu duel with a sorcerer on the streets of a nameless town in Maine at two in the morning and also for people that aren’t crows being dragged through the ocean by desperate selkies. Fuck logic, honestly.

And so, almost inevitably, Pat passes out.


	4. Chapter 4

There is a pitch-black wall spread out alone one end of an indistinct white void, and it seems to stretch out into infinity on both ends. Brian, dressed in a dark red suit that fits him absolutely _perfectly_, crouches in front of it – flipping through a notebook and with a stack of small cards to his left. He’s frowning intently. He also, for some reason, has a moustache.

“Huh,” says Pat.

Brian glances over his shoulder at him, and flashes a quick, dazzling smile at him. “Be right with you,” he says, and starts pinning various flashcards with words and images printed on them to the wall, which appears to be made of some soft, springy substance. As Pat watches, he produces a skein of red yarn from literally nowhere and starts looping it around pins on the board, tongue sticking out slightly as he does so. He looks like he’s going to be at the task of getting the yarn to stay put on the wall for a few minutes, so Pat takes the opportunity to look around and orient himself.

It’s... just a white void. Not _glaringly _white, it doesn’t hurt his eyes or anything, but it’s a uniform colour and consistency stretching out forever, except where that black wall is. The ground’s similarly white, but a kind of off-colour white so he can actually tell where it ends and the rest of it begins. He and Brian are the only ones there.

“Huh,” Pat says again.

Brian stands up and whirls around, grinning at Pat again. On the wall behind him, he’s set up what looks like a scale, or a timeline. At the far left end, there’s a flashcard that just says ‘intentional’ and at the other, the card says ‘reactional’. Halfway between, a line that apparently marks the tipping point between these two. There’s a small army of pins clustered just below that, waiting to be used.

“So, what do you think?” he asks, spreading his hands out presentationally – indicating his handiwork.

“Well, not gonna lie,” says Pat, “the moustache is kinda weird.”

Brian pulls a face at him. “Rude! I put a lot of effort into it!”

“Not, like, _bad _weird,” Pat is quick to assure him, “just – _weird. _I literally saw you yesterday and you didn’t have it, and now I’m standing here in front of you and – is this some kind of dryad thing, Brian? Do you guys have magic hair-growth powers that I didn’t know about?”

Brian laughs. His eyes are bright and his motions are smooth, like he’s just had a really great nap – and actually, come to think of it, Pat feels about the same. He feels _good, _really good. Perfectly healthy and alert, not a single worried thought or anxious feeling in his head. He _oofs _as Brian comes forward, falling into him with bright enthusiasm, arms tangling easily around his neck. Weirdly, Brian doesn’t go in for the kiss – instead choosing to hug Pat tightly, spinning the two of them around in a tight circle.

“Not a dryad thing,” he explains, pulling back with a little hop backwards, “a dream thing!”

“A dream thing. Wait – ” Pat casts a glance around his surroundings, registering the absurdity of it all for the first time. “ – so all of this, it’s-?”

“A construct of your unconscious mind made up of a series of infinitely complex electrical impulses for the purpose of puzzling out everything that happened to you while you were most recently awake? Sure is!”

“And you’re –“

“Not actually Brian, just a cool spooky brain ghost created in his stunning vis_age _and with the possession of his scintillating personality for the purpose of doing that puzzling-out for you? Absolutely. That’s me. Hello.”

“I was actually going to ask if you were sporting a moustache because some part of my subconscious secretly wants you to have sexy facial hair, but – yeah, you know what – that works too.”

Brian pauses, momentarily thrown off and looking a little pleased, too. “You think my moustache is sexy?”

Pat shrugs. “It’s growing on me.”

“No, it’s growing on _me,_” Brian corrects. “Me and my dream face – and for the record, I’m moderately sure this isn’t a you thing. I just really wanted to try out the moustache thing for a change. You know, while I have the chance.”

“I mean, _valid,_” Pat says, “but aren’t you – well, _me? _A part of me? A part of my brain? Brain Brian?”

Brian cackles at that, a quick little burst of joy, and then he sobers up a bit. “_Ha _– well, yes and no – and also yes, but in a different way. Putting it simply, I’m your perception of Brian,” he says, and turns back to the black wall, picking up the stack of flashcards as he does. He starts sorting through them absently, eyeing the timeline on the wall. “You know how whenever you do something stupid there’s a voice in the back of your head that sounds exactly like someone you know who’d know how to deal with that stupid thing, telling you in very very exact terms how precisely you fucked up?”

“Uh, yeah?”

Brian nods. “Hi. It’s me.”

“Shit,” says Pat. “Uh, sorry about not listening to you and grabbing that cookie tray out of the oven with my hands that one time?”

Brian nods solemnly at that. “Yeah, you _should _be; that was painful as all hell.”

“Uh. I won’t do that again, promise.” Pat looks at the black wall, with its incomprehensible timeline and markers, and then back at Brian. “So what’s actually going on here? Not that I’m not glad to see you, but –”

“Dreams are the mind’s way of making sense of things,” says Brian cheerily. “Maybe there’s something I’m going to tell you that you should be listening to!”

“Or maybe, like most of my dreams are, this is going to be complete weird nonsense,” Pat says dryly.

“Unless it’s a magic dream.”

Pat frowns. “_Is_ it a magic dream?”

“Could be,” says Brian. He winks, does double finger guns. “But hey, what do I know? I’m just Brain Brian. And I’m about to slam-dunk a masterpiece of an improvised brain lecture on you, and –” he pauses, and frowns. “And you still want the moustache gone, don’t you.”

Pat nods reluctantly. “Kinda, yeah. Not that it’s not – but it’s distracting me.”

Brian smiles. “All right, but only for you, Pat Gill,” he says, and Pat blinks and he’s back to normal, no trace that it was ever there in the first place. “And actually – while we’re at it –” He lifts his hands into the air like a maestro about to bring a masterpiece into existence, twirls easily on the spot, and splays them out to the sky. “_Boom!”_

Reality abruptly rewrites itself around them. The white space retreats, funnelling away into the walls and floor and ceiling and furniture of a very familiar room. The floors are wooden and the walls are painted a bit wonkily, and it’s a beautiful summery-looking day outside. Brian’s timeline and pins and crazy red yarn are still there, but they’re on a smaller, more portable pinboard that stands, on wheels, in the middle of Pat’s living room. He and Brian are standing in the middle of the room, and Brian’s looking as pleased as punch.

Pat grins at this, and takes a seat on the couch. “Nice trick.”

“Thanks!” Brian wheels over the pinboard so it’s in front of the television. He’s still wearing the suit, Pat notices. “Imagine what it’d be like if I could do it in real life, as Flesh Brian!”

“Terrifying,” says Pat with a fond smile.

“_Awesome,_ I think you mean.” He looks over at the board that’s now behind him, and straightens up. “Right! Enough of that! I don’t know how much time we’ve actually got left here, so. Without further ado, I’m gonna bust this baby wide open. And by ‘this baby’, I mean you, and by you, I mean your magic. _Lezzgo!_”

“Wha –”

Brian flings his hands up into the air, and strikes a ridiculous pose with a completely deadpan expression on his face. From literally nowhere, loud, enthusiastic, and wholly dramatic music blasts, causing Pat to jump. On the board behind him, the words ‘BUSTING PAT’S MAGIC WIDE OPEN’ appear in a bold white font, only to disappear seconds after as the music cuts and Brian drops the pose.

“So here’s the thing,” he says, all business – as if the previous five seconds had never happened at all. “You have absolutely no idea how the fuck your magic works, which means by extension, neither do I. Your mom’s magic was all potion-and-herb based, your dad did more conventional spellcasting stuff but you never really paid enough attention to that, and your sister, she was closer to your mom’s style, so. But _you _are something unique – you’re not your parents, and you’re not your sister, so your magic is gonna manifest as something similarly unique and it is _my_ goal and yours on this fine imaginary summer day to figure out exactly what that something is and how it works, if we can.”

“How do you know all this –” Pat begins, but Brian cuts him off.

“No audience participation, shh!,” he says sternly, pointing at him, and then, “but to answer that, it’s because I’m actually you in disguise and have been this entire time. Got a full, no-holds-barred access pass to literally every part of your brain. Technically, I’m not Brain Brian, I’m just a Pat wearing a Brian suit.”

“So kissing you would be weird,” says Pat. This whole thing feels like something from one of Thomas’s videos, and it should seem strange coming from Brian but it _works _somehow. His brain is mashing up a bunch of parts of his life into a big bizarre jumbled heap, he knows, and he’s actually enjoying it quite a bit.

“Kissing me would be _very _weird,” Brian agrees, “but if you’re into it, I am too by definition. _Anyway._” He jabs a finger at Pat. “You’re distracting me! Stop that! Different types of magic, very broadly speaking, can be put on a sort of axis.” He gestures towards the ‘intentional’/’reactional’ timeline already on the board. “And I’ve got the X-axis of it right here. You get brownie points and choice of background music for the rest of this lecture if you can guess what the Y-axis is.”

“Oh, audience participation is allowed again?” Pat asks, half-jokingly.

Brian pulls a face at him. “Uh,_ yeah _it’s allowed, didn’t you just hear me? Ten seconds, Patrick Gill, hurry up; short, succinct responses only.”

Pat thinks for a second. It’s surprisingly easy to remember what Griffin had said about sorcerers versus witches, what feels like centuries ago. “Internal versus external, right?” he says, already knowing he’s correct.

“Right on the money!” says Brian, snapping his fingers delightedly in the air. He looks at the flashcards in his hands, looks over at the board, then shrugs. This time, instead of spending a lengthy period of time painstakingly adding a new feature to his board, he just waves a hand and realitywarps the Y-axis, with the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ labels already pinned to either side. “Cool. So – ”

“And I want the Wii Sports Resort theme playing through this,” Pat requests.

“Done,” says Brian, and it starts playing. Instantly. Not loud enough that they can’t talk and hear easily over it, but loud enough that it actually functions as proper diegetic background music. Fucking incredible. 

Pat thinks he could get used this sort of surreal world he’s currently existing in, and then he starts thinking about why he’s here, in the first place. His mind drifts, briefly, and he tries to recall what he had been doing before falling asleep – because he must have fallen asleep, to be here in a dream with a dream version of Brian, right? He can’t quite recall – it was something to do with Griffin, and hoodies, and – he feels his throat tighten up for some reason – there was something about red and water, lots of water –

“_No_,” snaps Brian, startling Pat into flinching and looking up at him. “Sorry,” he says, “sorry, it’s just – don’t think too hard about it, Pat. Trust me, you’re not going to – no. Not yet.”

Pat swallows. He nods. “What were you saying?”

Brian gives him a faintly worried look, but he quickly falls back into his cheerful, determined lecture-presenter persona. “Magic,” he says. “First up, I’ve come up with the criteria to determine whether or not something _is _magic.” He holds up four fingers, folding them over as he talks, animated and enthusiastic. “In order for something to be magic, it’s got to be any of the following: a), an act that couldn’t be achieved through current human limitations, b) an act that breaks the laws of conservation, physics, thermodynamics, etcetera, as we know them, c) something that gives someone an advantage, disadvantage, or change that couldn’t be caused by any other pre-existing natural means, or – d), any of the above combined.” As he says this, the criteria appear in white print down one side of the board. “Sound good?”

“Sounds pretty solid to me,” Pat admits, letting out a surprised huff of air. “_Wow._ I can’t believe I’ve subconsciously put this much thought into this, actually. This is – I don’t normally think about my magic, at all.”

“Yeah, as it turns out, there’s a tiny corner of your brain that’s devoted entirely to obsessing about this, and that corner is me,” Brian says. “So. With all this in mind, I’m going to take various magic things and start slamming them down on this chart, so we can see where your magic in particular kind of lines up, generally speaking. First up – ” he pulls a flashcard with a stylized doodle of a crow in flight, and waves it at Pat. “ – the obvious one. You can bird, Pat. You can bird real good. Magical transformation into animals, very cool and very improbable.”

“Basically all witches can,” Pat says. “Not just crows – cats, guinea pigs, I think my dad knew an axolotl witch? Which sounds super impractical, come to think of it.”

Brian nods. “Right, that checks out. It’s magic because it basically falls under all of my criteria here,” he says. “Breaks the laws of _something,_ check, breaks human limitations, check, check, check, I won’t spend too long on this because it’s self-evident. So...?”

“Uhh – internal and intentional, right?”

“Yep,” says Brian, and pins it to the axis. It’s all the way on the edge for ‘internal’, but closer to the middle on the X-axis, which Pat guesses is because of how it can sometimes be an instinct thing.

They go through a couple more types of magic that both Pat and other people they know can do. Simone’s water magic (internal, intentional), Jenna’s furry little problem (internal, reactional), Chelsea’s fae drugs (external, intentional, and also just weird), and pretty soon the board’s covered with little doodles and drawings representing friends’ and acquaintances’ magical powers, then Brian gets a serious look on his face, and says, “all right, time to talk about what happened this morning, ‘cause it’s some big heavy stuff. First of all. The locating spell. Remember that, Pat?”

Pat nearly doesn’t, which is weird, because it happened – well, not too long ago, right? It can’t have been longer than a couple of hours, although it feels more than that. “Yeah, it’s – I asked my magic to help me find Griffin’s sealskin,” he recalls, “which sounds – well, it sounds actually pretty fucking ridiculous, when I put it like that.”

“No, it’s a pretty valid way of summarizing it,” Brian says. “Magic’s kinda like a living force. It appreciates it if you ask politely for help, and I guess you asked just politely enough for it to hit you up with a handy locate-a-skin spell.” He holds up a flashcard with a cartoonish image of a magnifying glass surrounded by sparks and stars. “I’m gonna say, internal and intentional, veering a little bit towards reactional.” He pins it as he says it. “It only makes sense.”

“All right,” says Pat. “So –”

“So this brings me to the most recent magic thing you did, and that’s the badass move you pulled on that sorcerer,” Brian says. “And let me tell you, Pat? _Pat? _That was, a), fucking amazing and I love you, and b), completely unprecedented. You’re not supposed to be able to do that with red death magic. You should’ve straight-up fucking died on the spot, or your soul should’ve got eaten by it like _immediately_, leaving you an empty shell of a person lying on the road.”

“_What?”_ Pat asks. “That’s – _shit! _And wait, how do you even know any of that, because I sure as fuck didn’t!”

“Felt it,” Brian explains, tapping his chest twice. “Echoes through your nervous system, won’t bore you with the details, but putting it simply – you should be super fucking dead right now, my friend, my buddy, my pal.”

Brian doesn’t _sound _like Brian. He sounds – well, he does sound like Brian; words and voice and phrasing and everything, but there’s something there that sounds an awful lot like _Pat_, too.

“To break it down, here’s what happened,” Brian is saying, and he’s raising a finger to trace images in the air – and, as he does so, colourful lines spill out from his fingers, hanging there as he moves around them. “Asshole sorcerer casts spell with intentional, external basis,” he says, drawing a figure in spiky, angry red, “directed at Griffin, whose magic is mainly reactional, and internal,” another figure, this time in light blue, some distance away, and then he flicks a hand and an animated red bolt shoots out from the red figure’s body, travelling in slow motion towards the blue figure. “_However,_” and now he draws another person-shaped figure, fingers blurring in the air. This one is taller and outlined in soft grey, and he’s standing in the path of the red bolt. “However, _you_ are there, and your magic is the intentional, internal brand, and so –”

The bolt hits and the grey figure is now wreathed in red flame. Slowly, nasty-looking black tendrils begin to worm their way into the grey figure’s outline.

“If it was being mixed with reactional magic, it’d probably explode, straight-up,” Brian explains, one hand to his chin and the other on his hip. “But with intentional magic, it – uh, well, it starts eating you. There’s no other good way to put it, it’s just slurpin’ you up like a tasty snack. Magic goes first, obviously, which is why you feel so shitty right now, and then it’s onto lifeforce and blood and all sorts of other fun things you need to survive. But before it gets that far, you have the excellent idea to go crow,” he continues, with a pleased grin over in Pat’s direction, as if to say, _look what my cool boyfriend did_, and he snaps his fingers, pointing at the scene.

It changes, in a flash. The grey figure disappears, is replaced by a tiny crow doodle, and the red energy hovers in place for a moment, as if the grey person is still there, then it abruptly snaps back in the direction of the red guy. The black tendrils remain, digging into the crow’s essence. The red figure is yeeted cleanly across the room, and disappears through the far wall of the living room wall, and the blue figure cheers silently. Brian beams at it for a few seconds, and then he lowers his hand, and the images fade away into thin air. So does the faint background music, which might actually be a good thing, because it’s been making the situation even more bizarre than it already is.

He turns back to Pat. He’s got his serious face on, now. “Unfortunately, you’ve still got some of that bad bad vore magic in you,” he says, “which brings me to a, uh, rather unfortunate conclusion that I need to share with you right now.”

“I don’t know if I want to hear this,” Pat begins.

“You’re dying,” says Brian blandly.

It takes Pat like a full thirty seconds to process this, because for some reason the very concept and the way it’s being presented to him is almost too completely absurd to take it. “I’m what.”

“You’re dying,” Brian repeats. It’s still calm and collected, but there’s a bit of a downwards quirk to one side of his mouth now, and something sad in his eyes. “The strain of the magic eating at you, and the snapback _from _that magic on your heart, combined with the tiny little fact that Griffin’s dragging you through freezing cold water by your claws at roughly, uh,” and for some reason, he glances down to check his watch. And he’s not even _wearing_ a watch. “- fifteen miles per hour, which is, by the way, a pretty fucking fast speed to be getting dragged through the water at, and – well. Crows aren’t fucking meant for the ocean,” he concludes, almost apologetically. “You’re not going to last very long at this rate.”

Pat doesn’t _feel _like he’s dying, or being dragged through freezing water, or that his heart’s going to burst open from magical strain. He feels – actually, he just feels kind of numb, now. Detached from the fact that it’s happening. He has absolutely no doubts whatsoever that it’s true, but it’s mind-blowingly difficult to understand that it’s happening, happening right now even as he sits peacefully in his living room with Brian in full lecture-mode right in front of him. To borrow one of Griffin’s little idiosyncratic phrases, his bean is gettin’ freaked something awful.

“Right, all right, okay, _cool_,” he says, regaining his ability to speak, “so I’m dying, so that’s a thing. But if that’s true, then what are you even _doing? _If you’re really part of my brain and trying to help, then why didn’t you just tell me that in the first ten seconds of this dream and then I could’ve woken myself up, and then I could’ve had more time –”

Brian just shakes his head. “It doesn’t work like that. Sorry.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Pat says. “Also, _what,_” he gestures expansively at the world around him, and then more pointedly at the pinboard and Brian’s red yarn-entangled chart on it, “the _fuck _is all of _this_.”

Brian has the decency to at least look a little guilty. “This... _uh._ Well, I guess I’m basically the final burst of endorphins that your brain’s giving off in its last living moments.”

“Fantastic,” says Pat.

Brian shrugs. “Hey, at least they’re good-looking endorphins, right?” he says lightly, and then his expression drops, and so does the world around them. Everything – the room, the sofa, the light streaming in from the summer afternoon outside, the pinboard and all their notes – they flow away like water down a drain, and they’re left standing in a blank white void again. They’re face-to-face, inches away from each other, and there’s no more ambient background noise, and the silence is deafening.

Pat doesn’t know if he’s just imagining it, but he swears to god he can feel his heart slowing down to a painful crawl; writhing in his chest. And not in a good way. There’s probably no good way for it to happen. He remembers the acrid sting of that red magic now, remembers how it’d wrapped its way around his essence and into his soul. He doesn’t know if the soul is a thing that can be affected in a physical-adjacent way or anything, but he’s got the feeling there’s marks like bruises on his now, where the magic had strangled its way around it.

“You gotta wake up now,” Brian says, an undercurrent of urgency to his voice.

“I know,” Pat says, and reaches forward with a hand just as Brian does the same, accidentally mirroring his motions with a kind of uncanny symmetry. “Listen, I just need you to know – ”

“It’s all right,” Brian interrupts. “It’s okay, I know already, you don’t need to – ”

“_Do _you?” Pat wonders. “Because I was about to tell you that I’ve just realized, when I told you I wouldn’t try to pick up any more hot oven trays with my bare hands, that was probably a lie and I’m almost definitely going to do it again no matter how much the tiny version of you at the back of my head is yelling at me, and –”

Brian rolls his eyes, laughs. “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought.”

“ – and also, I love you,” Pat adds. “Flesh-You and Brain-You and whatever other yous there are floating around, it’s – you’re great. You’re _perfect. _Thanks for trying to keep my mind off everything, even if it was just some – weird biological defence mechanism, jesus fuck this is weird, and – and... I love you so much.”

“I know that too,” Brian says – smiling, genuine and soft – and Pat grins back, and Brian leans forward and frames his face with two hands and kisses him like their current reality is the only one that matters, and Pat presses into it like nobody else in the world exists, and it’s only very _very _slightly weird. It goes on for a second and an eternity, then Brian’s hands move down from Pat’s face to his chest, and he draws back for a split second, and then he says, “good luck,” and just. _Shoves._

Pat falls backwards, arms pinwheeling wildly, and shatters outwards through the white void. It breaks as he smashes through it, fracturing into silver and releasing him into the blackness beyond, which sucks him in like greedy endless mud, pulling him into eternity. As he goes, he can see the rough-and-ragged edges of the gap he’d exited from, and can see Brian, framed in it. He gives Pat an enthusiastic double thumbs-up. Pat barely manages to return the gesture before the darkness wraps itself around him, pressing itself all over his skin and senses and eyes, and then he’s just –

_ – gone._

* * *

Awareness comes in snatches.

“Oh shit, oh god, _I fucked up,_” is the first thing Pat hears, accompanied by the sensations _cold _and _wet _and a sharp, stabbing pain in his chest. “God, I fucked up so bad –”

He tries to let out a moan, but he doesn’t have the energy – or vocal chords – to make it happen.

“Okay, shit, shit, hold on, I’m calling Syd,” someone says, and somebody else says, “but, wait, isn’t she out in the ocean right now?” and the first person says, “fuck! Shit! Uh – come on come on – _fuck_ I’ll call Rachel, they’re out together right?”

The air smells like water. It also smells faintly of fish. He doesn’t know where he is.

“Hey, Rachel? Rache – okay. Thank fuck – listen, we have a –”

Somebody’s carrying him, placing him on something soft.

“I’m so sorry, _jesus,_ I fucked up – listen, everything’s going to be all right, we’ve just gotta –”

His consciousness picks this moment to short out, and when it decides to tune back into reality, he feels a) a whole lot drier, but b) a whole lot colder and c) a whole lot shitter. He feels sick and shaky and barely connected to his corvine body. He has no idea if crows can actually throw up and doesn’t particularly want to find out. He just lies still and tries not to move, breathe or think – it’s less painful, that way.

“ – really did a number on your back, _yeesh._ Hold still.”

“Trav, I swear to god – I _said _I’m fine. I’m not the one who’s half-drowned and fucking _comatose_ wrapped in a bunch of blankets over there –”

“Griffin, it’s not a goddamned _competition_,” says the first person, and then, after a moment of consideration, “also – crowmatose.”

“I swear to god; I’m going to end you,” grumbles the second person, but there’s affection there, buried beneath the worried tone. Pat would be thinking _aw, brotherly love _if he didn’t suddenly feel like someone was strangling him with invisible hands.

“Uh, does he look like he’s awake?” someone else asks.

His chest feels really weird. It’s like something is squeezing at his heart, making it pump just faster faster faster. When he’s a crow, his heartrate tends to be pretty fast but not _this _fast. It’s fluttering like, ha ha, like a caged bird; he thinks it might be trying to break out through his feathers and skin and he wonders at that’ll look like when it happens. He can’t breathe. _He can’t breathe._

“Pat? _Pat!?_”

“_SHIT! FUCK! _–”

“Hey, uh, Pat, I need you to know that if you die here it is one _hundred percent your fault _and you’d better fucking come back as a ghost and tell your boyfriend that this was _your _fucking fault because I am _not _becoming meat supply for this year’s Selkie Penis Barbeque, by dryads and for dryads – ”

“Griffin, SHUT UP AND GIVE ME MY PHONE – HEY _GET ME MY PHONE_ _QUICK_– ”

Blackness and tightness and pain.

His eyes open. He blinks. His chest still hurts, but differently somehow, and so does his head. He can’t quite see properly, everything’s vague and blurry and he feels like the world’s been cut-and-pasted so it’s two inches to left of where it should really be. He feels like _shit, _head to toe, so it takes him a good few seconds and focus. He sees – he sees the McElroys leaning over him. He’s vaguely aware that he’s splayed out on the ground (some sort of stone floor?), wings askew, and he can see-and-sort-of-feel that Justin’s got a hand on the feathery ruffle that is his chest. Griffin’s hoodie is draped over his shoulders but he’s also got a blanket on like a cape. Travis is kneeling, and he’s got someone’s iPhone in his hands. They all look tense and anxious and for once in their lives they’re not talking, not at all; which is – you never get silence in a room when they’re all together, so it’s downright _unsettling._

The moment they see him awake, though, they all relax like it’s some sort of pre-arranged coordinated thing. “Thank _fuck,_” Justin says, removing his hand from Pat’s chest. “That was – _fuck_. Jeezy creezy, my man, you scared us for a moment there.”

_What the hell just happened? _Pat wonders, unable to voice the thought and desperately confused. There had been – there was – _what?_

“Um, yeah, as it turns out,” says Griffin, sounding... well, he sounds _something_ and it’s definitely an emotion and a strong one but it’s very hard to place, “you _can _do CPR on birds.”

“Caw-diopulmonary Resuscitation,” offers Travis, sounding a lot less enthusiastic than usual.

“Uh_, not the fucking time, _Scraps_,_” says Griffin.

“I’m sorry _I’m sorry _I make jokes to deal with stress! And this is _very_ stressful!”

Somewhere from behind them, there’s a splash of water, and the padding of feet. Justin swings around, and says, “_oh you are a literal angel thank god_ –” and Pat’s awareness cuts out abruptly again, like a faulty flickering television set.

And then he’s back, and he’s lying on something soft again, and Sydnee is kneeling in front of him, saying, “ – but I’m not a vet, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to – ” and her hair’s dripping wet and so’s the T-shirt that it looks like she’s just tugged on. _Thank god, a competent woman, _he thinks, bizarrely. She’s got a frown, a serious frown, and a hand to his back like she’s trying to figure out his heartbeat, and whatever she’s feeling it’s probably not good.

“You don’t need to be, Syd, I think it’s a magic thing,” someone else is saying from nearby.

Sydnee shakes her head, and hold up a hand. “Everybody quiet, I think he’s – Pat? Patrick? Can you hear me?”

He manages a shaky barely-a-nod, and she seems relieved, somewhat. “Great. Listen. I _suspect _that what’s happened to you has something to do with your magic being immensely depleted,” she says, quick and serious, “which is _very_ not good, and while you’re in crow-form, you’re not going to be able to regain that power – and it’s going to get worse, too, because, compared to humans, crows are _small _and pretty weak. The remains of sorcerer magic in your system’s going to chew you up and obliterate you.”

Pat... does not like the sound of any of this. Not in the least.

“So I’m gonna transfer you some of my magic,” she continues. “Not too much, that probably wouldn’t be good for you, but just enough so that you can turn yourself back to human mode, because I have... well, a _lot _more experience with human bodies than crow bodies. It’ll be easier to do something about you then. Sound good?”

This sounds a lot better. A _whole _lot better. He nods slightly again.

She says, “okay, hold still,” and presses her hands – cold, steady – to his head. He feels her magic seeping in through the cracks in his feathers like hot honey, and he breathes in and it fills him right up. Sydnee’s magic is nothing like his. It’s clean and bright and just a bit clinical, there’s a hint of antiseptic there – but it’s a welcome sort of cleanness because it’s nothing like the ozone sting of the rogue sorcerer’s magic and in fact it’s actually sort of working to push that red angriness away.

“Right,” says Sydnee, removing her hands – too soon, Pat thinks, because he still feels mostly empty – “that should do it. Try transforming back now.”

It takes Pat three tries to get it right, because for some reason the very idea of flipping himself back to human is distant and confusing, but when he gets a proper hold of that bright magic (very dim, at the moment) in his chest and gives it a proper tug, he feels the feathers begin to melt away and his spine elongate and unbend. It’s a bit of a gruesome transformation – it’s not smooth or easy, and he’s pretty sure it must look pretty disgusting too – but eventually he’s lying, panting, on the ground; with all ten fingers and toes intact and his glasses spilling off his face. He lets out an exhausted, breathless laugh, and feels Sydnee reach down, and squeeze his hands. “Well done,” she says warmly.

“Thanks,” he says, because he can’t think of anything to say. The flutter in his heart is less pronounced now that he’s human, but the headache is still raging and not even the last remnants of Sydnee’s magic can quiet it. He manages to sit up, sort of, and pretty much the exact moment that he does that, Griffin comes barrelling into him, skidding recklessly along the hard ground to slam him into a bear hug.

“Ow,” he croaks, instinctively raising his hands to hug him back anyway. 

“Dumbass,” Griffin says, fingers scrunching tightly into the back of Pat’s shirt, “idiot, moron, you – fucking _idiot._”

“Thanks, thanks a lot,” says Pat. “We are, of course, remembering the fact that I broke you out of selkie hell at 2 AM on a Tuesday morning-?”

“Your heart stopped for a full minute, you asshole,” Griffin all-but-yells into his shoulder. “A full fucking _minute_.”

“Jesus,” says Pat, thrown.

“Yeah, bud. It wasn’t great,” Justin says, coming to take a seat up against the wall – the cave wall? They’re in a cave? He can’t seem to focus long enough to properly take in his surroundings. “But Google is our friend, and more specifically Yahoo Answers is also our friend for once in its shitty, shitty, unnaturally long life, because that was the first result that came up, believe it or not, when we searched for bird CPR.”

“Thank fuck for Yahoo Answers user Rainbowzz, huh?” Griffin says, and releases Pat. Like they’ve planned it in advance, Justin slides in neatly and sweeps Pat into another, more unexpected hug. It’s definitely shorter than Griffin’s hug, but it’s less desperate and panicked and more just – there.

“We’re doing hugs?” Travis says. “Because if we are, I really super do wanna hug you right now, you look like you need it.”

“Hugs sound good, really good,” Pat says, “just not so tight this time, it’s – ” and then Justin laughs and stands up and steps back and Travis is crushing him in another hug. He swears he can feel his ribs cracking. “...okay,” he gasps, and resigns himself to the tragic but well-documented ‘death by McElroy asphyxiation’, which usually only happens due to uproarious laughter, not full-body crushing, but whatever works.

“Thanks,” Travis whispers in his ear. “For everything.”

Pat just nods.

After a few seconds – Travis gives excellent hugs; actually, all of them do – he withdraws, leaving Pat swaying and trying to stay upright – and mostly failing. “Guys, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna pass out,” he says weakly, because his vision is going grey and blurry and he’s _really _tired. And even as he says that, he starts sagging backwards, and Griffin’s catching him and lowering him carefully to the ground and making worried noises.

“Oh shit, we hugged him to death,” Justin says, sounding genuinely startled.

“Don’t worry, it’s normal – magical exhaustion,” Sydnee says, although it sounds very far away. “Just sleep it off.”

He mumbles something unintelligible in response to that, and even he can’t understand what he’s saying, but Griffin says, “yeah, uh-huh – we got it. Come on, birdbrain, naptime.”

Someone throws a blanket over him – thick and heavy and soft – and someone else tucks one underneath him, shielding him from the cold of the floor, and he can’t do anything but let it happen. A cold hand is pressed to his forehead, and then withdrawn. Low conversation starts up, over his head, and he can’t make out the words or the meaning. It’s just white noise that envelops him like ocean foam. But it’s fine. This is a safe place, he knows; the people around him aren’t going to do anything to hurt him. He’s warm and comfortable, and the bruises criss-crossing his soul are already beginning to fade. Griffin’s fine, he’s fine, everything’s fine, so he can rest easy now.

With all this in mind, Pat sleeps – and this time he doesn’t dream.


	5. Chapter 5

Pat wakes, slowly and carefully, and finds that he’s wrapped in something soft – several very soft somethings, he’s practically bundled in blankets. So much so that it’s a wonder he can actually breathe properly – because believe it or not, he actually can, pretty comfortably. And the room he’s in smells – ever so faintly and not entirely unpleasantly – of fish. More prominently, it smells like – water. In that way that watery environments tend to do. It’s not like water really has a smell, in and of itself, but it smells like water anyway, and it feels pleasantly cool and damp.

His eyes are still closed, and he takes a moment or two to take in how he’s feeling. He feels – okay, actually. In fact, he feels pretty damn good, all things considered. His chest aches, distantly, and he’s still tired, but his mind is clear and sharp and refreshed and he feels... energetic, almost. Like something happy and bright is buzzing underneath his skin. He smiles to himself, and opens his eyes, blinking a few times to clear away the sleep, and then realizes he doesn’t have his glasses on, so his surroundings are kind of just a grey-and-blue blur anyway.

“Shit,” he says aloud, extracts an arm from his blanket bundle to feel around his immediate surroundings. He doesn’t find his glasses, but he does find that he’s on top of some sort of mattress, and that the ground beyond that mattress is a gritty kind of stone. That doesn’t help him much, but it is kind of interesting, in a _I might have to deal with this later _kind of way. He feels that bright happy buzz under his chest again, and it takes him a second to properly identify it for what it is – magic_. _He really does want to see where he is and what’s going on.

An idea occurs to him.

_Internal, intentional, _he thinks, and raises a hand, not really sure what he’s doing. “Magic?” he mutters, trying to direct the sentiment at himself somehow. “Uh, hello? You there?”

The under-skin electricity vibrates enthusiastically, which probably means he’s doing something right.

“I need my glasses, can you – please get my glasses for me?” Nothing happens, and then he remembers doing the sealskin location spell and how it hadn’t worked until he was insistent and confident with the wording. “Give me my glasses. Please.”

Something tingles up-and-down his fingers, like they’ve fallen asleep and woken up again, and he nearly drops his glasses when they instantly rocket directly from wherever they were lying straight to his fingertips like an oddly-shaped, very fragile missile. He spends a second grinning to himself over _magic, he can do magic, oh yeah baby, _and then fumbles them onto his face and blinks again, looking around.

He’s in a cave. But like, a cool cave. But not, like, a thermally cool cave – although, yeah, okay, it is a bit cool in that way. Mostly, though, it’s aesthetically cool. Half of it is taken up by a massive natural pool of water that’s a bit too big to be a pond and a bit too small to be a lake, and from the way that it shimmers and ripples with light from beneath, it looks like it’s connected to a larger body of water, somehow. Maybe the rest of the ocean? There’s all sorts of colourful rocks and coral adorning the pool’s depths, and tiny fish dart in and out of sight. There’s two manta rays drifting lazily around in the shallows, apparently soaking in the sunbeams coming in from – uh – Pat looks up, and sees some decidedly non-natural skylights set into the cave roof. There’s glass or some other sort of transparent covering there, and there’s a whole bunch of these scattered through the cave, letting sunny patches in at regular intervals all throughout.

The rest of the cave – is surprisingly well-furnished, really. The far end, furthest away from the pool, is set up like a recording studio. Four desks house a whole bunch of microphones and computers and tech equipment set up and plugged in expertly to what looks like completely functional power sockets built into the walls. One of these desks has a basic-looking MIDI keyboard covering it, another has a whole bunch of post-it-notes that cover half of the screen of the computer that’s sitting on it, the other two are surprisingly clean and tidy. There’s another table that looks a lot like a kitchen table, a little counter-and-sink setup with a fridge next to it. A whole bunch of trunks are lined up against the wall, each with a little label that says ‘SCRAPS’ or ‘SYD’ or ‘DAD’, and a few of these trunks are open, with clothes and other personal possessions spilling out carelessly onto the ground. A guitar is hooked up on the wall above the trunks, a capo still hooked over the third fret and a few picks balanced precariously along the curve of its side.

There’s a set of stone steps that lead up to a little wooden door, and he assumes that it’s the exit to... well, somewhere. He’s guessing he’s in the ‘changing room’ that Griffin had mentioned so long ago, except it’s really a lot more than just a simple changing room. It’s possibly the cosiest cave Pat’s ever been in. He hasn’t been in many caves, but still. It’s lived-in and messy and happy. And he’s alone in it, apparently, because Sydnee is nowhere to be seen, and – at first glance – neither are the McElroy brothers.

Pat takes a moment to appreciate that they’ve apparently dragged out an air mattress from some long-forgotten storage cupboard for his sake – because he can’t actually see any other beds from where he is – and then he notices the seals. There’s three of them, right up next to the far wall of the cave. They look like they’re asleep, and they’re pressed so close together that they’re practically piled on top of each other – the smallest of them sandwiched between two larger seals, the largest of which has one of its flippers draped over its neighbours stomach. It takes Pat an embarrassingly long moment to realize that they’re not just some random seals that have somehow found their way into this cave to take a nap, and that they’re – well. It’s really obvious once you start looking. The oldest-looking seal is half-sprawled against the ground in a way that’s very reminiscent of the laid-back way that Justin tends to lounge in a chair when he’s comfortable with his surroundings. The middlest-looking one is a), snuggling into the smallest’s back with the kind of insistency you’d expect from a cat and b) sporting nail polish, purple and sparkly, carefully applied on its claws – which, come to think of it, should have been the first clue. And the sweet baby seal (and thirty under thirty media luminary, etc, etc) has face markings that really do look exactly like Griffin’s glasses. 

The scene is soft and intimate and just watching it makes Pat feel the entire emotion of ‘_god I wish that were me_’ in the deepest part of his soul because honestly, he doesn’t think he’s seen anyone look more protected and comfortable in his entire life.

A splash from that pool of water right behind him startles him and he actually almost very nearly goes crow again, out of pure reactionary shock. He catches himself a split second before he actually does, though, and curses himself for being jumpy, because – as he quickly realizes when he actually turns around – it’s only Rachel. Rachel, who’s settling herself in the shallows, shaking out the water from her short hair and looking simultaneously delighted to see him and immensely apologetic. He stumbles to his feet, using the cave wall for support – oh goddamnit his legs must’ve fallen asleep at some point – and limps over to meet her.

“Sorry for spooking you,” she says in a low voice as he realizes that standing isn’t going to be a viable option for him right here and now and finds a rock to collapse onto.

“I’ve had worse,” he says, matching her volume, and then, with a little wave, “hey.”

“Hey yourself. Good to see you,” she says, with one of those quiet sparkling smiles. “How’re you holding up? I heard you got yourself into some pretty deep shit with that sorcerer upstate.”

Her tone is casual enough, but the genuine worry underneath is almost palpable – and he doesn’t miss the way her tail is swishing from side to side in tight, even strokes, which is apparently her nervous tic. Pat wants to cry about how _nice _she is for approximately the next few hours, how great all of his friends are, really, but he chalks that up to general exhaustion and magical fuckery, and pushes it aside for the moment.

“Yeah, I got into a magic duel without really preparing for it, and got myself fucked up pretty bad,” he admits, wincing. “Not my proudest moment.”

“Nah,” she says, lightly. “From what Griffin told me, it _was _pretty damn cool.”

“I mean... I guess. Would have been cooler if I knew what I was doing.”

“Well, you know. Practice makes perfect.”

Pat stares at the ceiling for a moment. “Huh. Actually – I wonder if there’s, like, magic wrestling?”

“Thinking of making this a habit?” Rachel asks, laughing.

“Wizard wrestling,” Pat decides, because it sounds cooler. “...and, no. Not especially.”

“Good, because this one incident just about gave everyone a heart attack,” says Rachel. “The group chat’s been going wild for the last few hours. Brian panicked and pinged everybody at three in the morning, said you’d gone off to track down Griffin – and everybody _else _started panicking too and trying to find you, not that you needed much finding, apparently.”

Brian. The group chat. _Brian._

Oh no.

“What time is it?” he asks. Now _he’s _panicking a bit. It’s kind of impossible to tell the time of day in this cave; the watery light from the small bit of ocean inside gives no real indication of anything.

“It’s ten,” Rachel says, and then, “AM. But it’s –”

“_Fuck,_” Pat exclaims, louder than intended – the sound echoes off the cave walls, reverberating this way and that – and he scrambles for his phone. Which isn’t in any of his pockets. He’s not wearing his jacket, actually. _Where the fuck is it?_

Behind him, there’s a sleepy noise, like the snuffling growl of a just-woken-up dog, and he turns to see that Justin-the-seal is now regarding him with one mildly annoyed half-open eye. 

“Sorry,” he says to Justin, quieter. Justin looks at him for a long moment, then gives the blubbery seal equivalent of a shrug, and goes back to the seal cuddlepile.

As he does so, Rachel ducks elegantly under the water and swims the short distance to the other side of the rockpool, already reaching out to tug – a bucket? – closer to her from where it’s been sitting right next to some rocks and a low-to-the-ground table. “Your phone, right?” At Pat’s nod, she starts rooting around in the bucket. “I think it got soaked, so they would’ve put it –” she tugs his phone out, scattering white flecks all over the place. “ – here you go, hopefully it still works!”

Pat’s bones complain loudly at him as he rises to his feet to go and retrieve his phone. He tries his due best to ignore them. “Is that... rice?”

“Yeah,” she says, handing his phone over to him. “Apparently there’s a lot of water-related electronic malfunctions around here, so – only sensible, really.”

“Uh, thanks.” He looks at his phone. Looks at the bucket of rice. Back down at his phone again, and he debates whether or not to actually say it aloud for a good few seconds before caving. “You do know that the rice thing doesn’t actually work, right?”

Rachel just blinks at him. “Yeah,” she says, “but this is magic rice.”

“Oh,” says Pat, “right. Of course. How silly of me.”

He switches on his phone, and it works perfectly, because of course it does. There’s over nine hundred and ninety-nine new messages in the Maine group chat, so it’s stopped counting them, and he almost dreads to think what sort of chaos has been happening in there for it to rack up that many messages in the space of only a few hours. A few other people have texted him, and skimming through the message previews, they mostly seem to be along the lines of ‘where the fuck are you, you’re doing something stupid and reckless aren’t you’ so he decides to tackle those later, and swipes his way over to message Brian. 85 missed texts. Shit.

He starts from the top and tries to work his way down, but quickly realizes that the obvious panic and terror in Brian’s messages is causing _him_ to panic a little bit, even though he knows objectively that he’s safe and fine and nothing’s going to happen. So he just scrolls all the way to the bottom, reads the last few messages, and then starts typing out a reply.

9:55 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
aND I KNOW YOU’RE FINE AND PROBABLY JUST SLEEPING IT OFF BUT I’M STILL WORRIED ALL RIGHT

9:59 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
i should have come or something idk what i couldve done, drive the escape car or smthg?? why didn’t we do that pat why didn’t we drive a car out there so you and griffin could have had a quick way out instead of just straight up drowning yourself?? that would’ve been a GOOD plan, pat. and i could’ve been the getaway driver! i’ve always wanted to be a getaway driver! why did you crush my dreams like that, pat!

10:05 AM| Patrick Gill  
Because you don’t have a driver’s licence, Brian

10:05 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
HEY

10:06 AM | Patrick Gill  
Hey yourself!!!  
I’m alive btw

10:06 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
ya i guessed!!  
everything okay?  
well obvs not because MAGIC and DROWNING and everything but you’re feeling better now? hopefully?

10:07 AM | Patrick Gill  
Yeah  
Griff and Trav and Justin kind of saved my life I think  
Well actually Sydnee did

10:08 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
she is a Smart and Competent Woman

10:08 AM | Patrick Gill  
She really is  
Remind me to send her a fruit basket sometime

10:08 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
do people still do that?

10:08 AM | Patrick Gill  
What  
Send fruit baskets?

10:08 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
yeah

10:09 AM | Patrick Gill  
Idk  
If they don’t they should

10:09 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
fuck yeah fruit’s GREAT everybody should eat more fruit  
i’ll help you make one for her later  
oh ya speaking of which i should probly let you know

10:09 AM | Patrick Gill  
?

10:10 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
i’m heading over to the mcelcave rn  
simone’s driving everything’s good dw

10:10 AM | Patrick Gill  
Oh man thanks  
I mean I could probably just fly back? But like thanks a whole lot for REAL i can’t wait to see you guys

10:11 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
oh yeah we’re picking u up but MAINLY we just wanted to make sure you were all right

10:11 AM | Patrick Gill  
Aww  
I’m fine now seriously

10:12 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
your heart stopped, pat.  
that is like the opposite of fine

10:12 AM | Patrick Gill  
I mean I’m alive

10:12 AM| Brian David Gilbert  
if just being alive was the sole criteria for being okay the only people ever needing therapy would be corpses  
which would put a lot of necrophobic therapists out of a job come to think of it

10:13 AM | Patrick Gill  
Serves them right  
Corpses are people too  
Equal rights for our fallen brethren

Pat looks over and sees that Rachel has disappeared underwater again while he’s been texting. She’s drifting lazily in the bottom of the rockpool, and appears to be playing fetch with the manta rays. She sees him watching and waves at him, giving him a thumbs up – apparently trying to indicate that it’s all good, she isn’t bothered if he keeps on texting. He gives a double thumbs-up back, and watches her giving a manta ray scratches behind its – well, probably not ears, but whatever – for a few minutes, before returning to his phone.

10:14 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
you’re ridiculous

10:14 AM | Patrick Gill  
I am  
You are also pretty ridiculous and it’s great and I love you

10:14 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
see u soon nerd :heart: :heart: :heart:

10:15 AM | Patrick Gill  
:heart:

He takes a moment to grin at his screen like the soppy idiot he sometimes allows himself to be, and then he swipes over to the group chat entitled MEME CORNER, which is the very definition of chaotic and unhinged.

10:12 AM | Simone de Rochefort  
because seriously i am going to MURDER this fucker so hard you will not believe

10:13 AM | Jonah Scott  
hang on but are we thinking this through properly

10:13 AM | Simone de Rochefort  
we don’t NEED to think this through

10:14 AM | Jonah Scott  
i’m just saying

10:14 AM | Laura Kathryn Gilbert  
WE’RE GOING TO SMITE THIS PIECE OF SHIT JONAH  
NO ARGUMENTS

10:14 AM | Jonah Scott  
if we turn up in this town and start magicblasting him out of nowhere we WILL get arrested on murder and/or assault charges

10:15 AM | Simone de Rochefort  
i’m going for murder

10:15 AM | Chelsea Stark  
i am also down for murder

10:16 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
y’all KNOW i’m down for murder but jonah might have a point

10:16 AM | Patrick Gill  
What’s this about murder  
[Insert obligatory crow joke here]

There is a pause and then the ‘many people are typing’ notification comes up and remains up for a good few seconds.

10:17 AM | Jenna Stoeber  
PAT

10:17 AM | Simone de Rochefort  
HOLY SHIT

10:17 AM | Laura Kathryn Gilbert  
PAT!!

10:17 AM | Ashley Oh  
omg hi Pat!

10:17 AM | Patrick Gill  
Also Simone aren’t you driving. Please stop texting you’ve got my boyfriend in that car and I really really would like him alive safe and well  
Hi guys

10:17 AM | Chelsea Stark  
Hey Pat glad to hear you’re all right! :grin:

10:17 AM | Simone de Rochefort  
YEAH don’t worry it’s all good! bdg has my phone and he’s keeping me updated and i’m dictating to him

10:18 AM | Patrick Gill  
I hope to god that you’re telling the truth

10:18 AM | Simone de Rochefort  
would i lie to u

10:18 AM | Patrick Gill  
Perhaps

10:18 AM | Simone de Rochefort  
hmm

10:18 AM | Patrick Gill  
HMM

10:18 AM |Brian David Gilbert  
i am actually transcribing tho dw

10:18 AM | Laura Kathryn Gilbert  
um no offense pat it’s great to see you and all but  
can we get back to murder

10:19 AM | Patrick Gill  
Oh yeah absolutely  
We’re talking about the motherfucker who zapped me right

10:19 AM | Ashley Oh  
that’s the one  
im gonna bite his face off

10:19 AM | Jonah Scott  
Don’t, it’d probably taste terrible

10:19 AM | Ashley Oh  
shit you’re right

10:19 AM | Jenna Stoeber  
I feel like I need to make it super clear at this point that although we ARE joking around and throwing the word murder around like it’s a fun cheerful thing  
i for one am really genuinely upset about this. all of this. and human/nonmaj police probly aren’t gonna do SHIT about this guy so i am 100% serious about taking it into our own hands in this case

10:19 AM | Laura Kathryn Gilbert  
^^^^

10:20 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
yepyepyep p much

10:20 AM | Jenna Stoeber  
I mean we’ve got what  
8ish plus magical beings fully prepared to throw down

10:20 AM | Chelsea Stark  
for what it’s worth I’m fairly certain fae magic can overpower sorcery implants easy so

10:20 AM | Simone de Rochefort  
no listen he lives next to the fucking ocean i’ll just drown him it’s easy

Pat hears a noise, and looks up from his phone again to see that the McElroy brothers are now awake – or in the case of Travis, not wanting to be, if the way that he’s burying his snout into the ground and making grumbling noises that are pretty much universal no matter if you’re a seal or a human or anything in between are anything to go by. Griffin flops over onto his side, sees Pat up and awake and Rachel there too, and lets out a delighted _arf _that echoes and bounces all through the cave. Pat smiles and waves back, and waits for something to happen.

Justin is the first to transform back. It’s really weird, seeing the fingers emerge from beneath the skin, peeling it back from underneath to reveal his human form underneath. It’s even weirder how there’s almost no transition between it being thick grey seal skin and it being that horrendously loud, flashy jacket that Justin always wears – Pat couldn’t have pinpointed the moment it switched if he tried. He’s prying his skin off from the inside out, and then he’s unashamedly naked – completely naked, except for his jacket – and he’s standing up and shaking his hands out. “Flippers,” he explains to Pat. “It’s weird having fingers after a while – oh, shit, hang on – ”

Apparently aware of how uncomfortable Pat is with the sudden nudity – although he himself seems to be perfectly okay with it – he heads right over to the array of trunks and starts digging through the one labelled ‘HOOPS’. Travis, similarly, pulls his way out of his blubbery grey skin, and – after giving both Pat and Rachel a bright, enthusiastic greeting and a, “I’m so glad you’re okay, oh man,” – goes to get dressed properly.

_Fuck. Shit, _Pat thinks. Why are all the McElroys so innately bangable? It’s not even remotely fair_. No, stop that train of thought, it’s not the time, it really isn’t – _

Griffin wriggles and slaps his way across the ground and over to where he can hide himself behind a few rocks. Pat has to supress a bit of a snicker, because seals trying to move on land is never not going to be funny, but he manages to keep himself contained, with great effort. After a second of silence, Griffin’s human voice yells, “hey, throw me some clothes!”

Travis, now fully dressed but barefoot, digs into the trunk labelled ‘DITTO’ – balling several articles of clothing up and tossing them in Griffin’s direction. A hand shoots out from behind the rock, snatches them out of the air with uncanny precision, and withdraws, and then there is the faint sound of rustling clothes. Pat goes back to his phone.

10:25 AM | Patrick Gill  
The McElroys are up

10:25 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
oh good i was getting worried! how are they?  
how’s griffin?

10:25 AM | Patrick Gill  
Well I’ll let them speak for themselves whenever they get online but they all seem okay enough  
Rachel’s here but she’s chilling or smthng so she’s not online  
Sydnee’s not here? I’m 99% sure she was earlier but I guess she’s gone too now

10:25 AM | Rachel  
She’s here in town picking up food n stuff rn  
Also hello hello I’m paying attention, just lurking for now

10:25 AM | Patrick Gill  
Oh okay cool

10:26 AM | Jenna Stoeber  
Pat please weigh in on this?

10:26 AM | Patrick Gill  
Yeah?

10:27 AM | Jenna Stoeber  
so we’re now genuinely planning out what to do abt Asshole Sorcerer Dude and we’re drawing up plans at my place etc and I think we’re getting somewhere  
but we wanted to get your input first. what do you think we should be doing?

10:27 AM | Patrick Gill  
me?

10:27 AM | Jenna Stoeber  
you and griffin were most directly affected by this, it’s only right that you should have the final say in this

10:28 AM | Patrick Gill  
I think  
If what I’ve heard is right he’s hurt a lot more people than just me + griffin but the fact that he DID hurt griffin doesn’t help at all. I think we need to stop him and i think that @Jen you’re probably right about nonmagic people being able to do something about him bc he’ll just blast them or w/e BUT at the same time he’s super wildly powerful and griffin & i only just managed to get out of there alive and i really really really don’t want you guys to get hurt just because you’re mad on our behalf?  
idk and not to speak for griffin but i think he’d agree with me

10:28 AM | Griffin McElroy  
Yep

Pat startles when the tiny message bubble with Griffin’s name pops up onscreen, and looks up to see that Griffin’s now fully dressed – loose track pants, stripy shirt, hoodie back on, bare feet – and is sitting on one of the larger rocks with his legs curled loosely underneath him, texting with one hand and holding the hand of Rachel (who is underwater and also on her phone) with the other. He looks up at Pat, and offers him a thin but genuine smile, before looking back down and starting to type something else.

10:28 AM | Simone de Rochefort  
oh thank FUCK  
don’t ever scare me like that ever again mcelroy

10:28 AM | Griffin McElroy  
ha sorry

10:28 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
griffin omg hi!!

10:28 AM | Griffin McElroy  
Hey Bri  
Pat’s pretty much got all my thoughts down ^ up there. Listen I def want to do something about this guy but at the same time  
There’s a reason I didn’t want any of y’all coming after me, I KNEW you’d do something astoundingly stupid and reckless if you came  
And oh hey but I thought Pat would be the sensible one

10:29 AM | Patrick Gill  
Me  
Sensible  
ME???

10:29 AM | Griffin McElroy  
Yeah well I know that NOW  
So uhh TL;DR  
Light this motherfucker UP but be super super fucking careful guys I’m not even halfway joking  
Def bring Chelsea along

10:30 AM | Jenna Stoeber  
Noted. thanks for the input, both of you

10:30 AM | Patrick Gill  
No problem

10:30 AM | Griffin McElroy  
:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: hope that helped

10:31 AM | Brian David Gilbert  
@Pat ETA 10 minutes  
i gotta turn on google maps for this last stretch so I’m going to jump off the chat! which means simone’s gone too. say goodbye to simone everyone

10:31 AM | Jenna Stoeber  
goodbye simone

10:31 AM | Jonah Scott  
Bye Simone

10:31 AM | Chelsea Stark  
bye simone!

10:31 AM | Rachel  
see you soon!

10:32 AM | Patrick Gill  
I’m going to hop off now, too  
So I can socialize like a regular human being, you know

10:32 AM | Laura Kathryn Gilbert  
Being a regular human being is overrated, Pat.

He smiles and turns off his phone, sliding it into his pocket. As he does, he sees Griffin do the same before saying something to Rachel that makes them both grin like idiots for a full five seconds, then releasing her hand and slipping elegantly off the rock to the ground – heading towards Pat. “Hey, you,” he says, coming to a halt right in front of him.

“Hey,” says Pat. “How are you holding up?”

Griffin looks like he’s considering lying for a good few seconds, and then he just sighs and kind of wilts a bit. He twists a hand into the fabric of his hoodie and is briefly very, very still. “Probably about as well as you are.”

“I don’t know,” says Pat, and he shrugs. “My heart still feels a bit fluttery, but – I feel pretty good, all things considered.”

“Your heart still feels-? Oh, that’s _all? _That’s all right, then!” Griffin huffs, looking amazed. “Jesus fucking Christ. I’m surprised you don’t have burn marks from that stunt you pulled.”

“Uh, I might?” Pat offer, lifting up the collar of his shirt to check. There’s no scorching that he can see or feel, but – “you never know.” A beat. “I heard Travis say something about your back,” he says more quietly. “Did-?”

Griffin visibly winces, and runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, that – that was mostly you, man. You dug your claws in pretty hard –”

“Oh, god,” Pat says, and buries his face in his hands, because _sorry _doesn’t even begin to cover something like that.

“ – do _not _apologize, you were just trying to hold on, it’s _fine_, seriously – hey, hey, listen, _Pat_, listen. I nearly drowned you, so let’s call it even, yeah? Yeah?”

Pat lifts his head up. Griffin’s kneeling in front of him, eyes bright and serious in the light streaming in from overhead. They maintain eye contact, and then Pat nods, slowly, and Griffin nods too, and Pat says, “you’re okay now?”

“It’s definitely healing,” Griffin says. “Syd shot me up with a dash of that good, good magic juice, so – I’m kinda high on that right now. But – yeah.”

“Yeah,” says Pat. They stare at each other in silence, for another few moments. There’s a dreadful sort of awkwardness to it, because there really should be more to say and the words should be flowing between them far, far smoother than they are, but it’s just not happening.

Griffin draws in a breath, lets it out, and then smiles, ever so carefully. It’s like the sun coming out from behind dark, unending clouds. “C’mon, as long as you’re here –” He takes Pat’s arm, guides him carefully to his feet. “Might as well show you around, right? We don’t really get many visitors around here.” He grins and it’s bright as anything. “Gotta take those opportunities to flex when you can, right?”

“Sure,” Pat finds himself agreeing. “Yeah, that’d be great.”

Griffin does, indeed, end up showing him around the cave. He points out the manta rays – “they’re Trav’s, they adore him – Lily and Buttercup, he’s got websites for them, well, one website – you should check ‘em out, it’s real cute –” and they end up messing around on the keyboard and guitar for a bit, just because they can.

Over by the trunks, Travis and Justin are in the midst of an involved argument over what makes a sandwich a sandwich. Travis seems to be of the opinion that breaded chicken is, technically speaking, a chicken sandwich, because it’s meat between bread, no matter how deconstructed that bread is, and honestly that fits the definition of a sandwich pretty well in his book. Justin is, predictably, spluttering incoherently and throwing incandescently angry counterarguments about this back at his brother. It’s not working at all, because Travis McElroy’s opinions are like bulletproof shields, and the more ridiculous and outlandish those opinions are, the more invulnerable they tend to make him.

Pat’s somewhat hesitant when it comes to playing the guitar. He knows his chords, but he’s rusty – hasn’t had a chance to get his hands on one for a good few months. He and Griffin manage to thrash out a halfway-decent rendition of ‘Birdhouse In Your Soul’ with the help of a chord sheet that Griffin pulls up on his laptop and their shared encyclopaedic knowledge of every They Might Be Giants song ever. His chords and strumming are pretty simple, and Griffin’s piano skills are basic but solid. Together, they are the beginnings of a very mediocre garage cover band, and Pat’s having the time of his life.

They’re just starting to puzzle out ‘Honeybee’ and trying to work out if they can actually manage anything close to a decent harmony, when a doorbell rings. This is frankly bizarre, because they’re in a secret cave and doorbell noises shouldn’t be happening in secret caves, especially not secret selkie caves, but the McElroys seem to just take it in stride, like they take everything else in stride – like life is just one long, drawn-out comedy improv to them in which breaking the sacred _yes, and _rule is completely unthinkable.

Or maybe it’s because it’s their cave and they probably installed the doorbell.

Well, either way.

Griffin’s fingers halt on the keyboard, and he’s standing up and calling out, “I’ll get it,” on what seems like pure habit.

“I’m coming too,” says Travis instantly, leaping to his feet and abandoning the sandwich debate without a second thought. Justin looks like he can’t decide if he should be annoyed or relieved.

Griffin halts, and, unlike his brother, decides instantly that ‘annoyed’ is the perfect emotion to express. “Come on, Trav, it’s fine. D’you really think an evil sorcerer would ring our doorbell and announce their presence politely at the doorstep? It’s probably just Brian and Simone.”

“Yeah, but it _could _be!” Travis insists, not even bothering to disguise his protectiveness and caution as something else. “There could be _polite _evil sorcerers, you don’t know that there’s not! Hashtag not-all-sorcerers!”

Griffin sighs and kind of laugh-coughs, and starts heading up the steps to the little wooden door, with Travis a few steps behind him. “I mean, you’re right, I guess. It’s not like all mad sorcerers are like,” he affects a rough, slimy voice as two two of them step through the doorway, “_eughhh, I’m all evil and shit – _a lot of them could just be like, _hi, how’s it going, my name’s – _”

The door closes behind them, leaving Pat strumming absently at the guitar and Justin getting up to stretch dramatically, before wandering over in Pat’s direction. “Guitar, huh?”

Pat stops trying to remember how to play B-flat-minor, because his fingers are starting to cramp, and holds the guitar out to Justin. “Here. You know how to play, I know you do. Save me from my misery.”

Justin grins ruefully. “I’m not sure about ‘knowing how to play’, but...”

He snags Griffin’s abandoned seat and takes the guitar, strumming along the strings and adjusting the tuning pegs slightly. He takes a pick from a small pile of abandoned picks on the side of the desk, and then plays three chords. Despite his words, he seems to know what he’s doing – it really does sound very nice. Pat’s gaze wanders a bit around the cave as Justin plucks and strums and hums to himself, apparently trying to figure some song out.

“What’s that?” Pat wonders, pointing at a large rectangular object half-covered by a tarpaulin, shoved far into the corner of one side of the cave.

Justin stops playing for a second and visibly shudders. “It’s Griffin’s mistake, is what it is. Do me a favour and don’t go near it, and if you _do _go near it, god forbid, absolutely do _not_ expose your neck to it.”

Pat squints. He probably shouldn’t be curious, but he is. Morbidly so. “Are those _fish _painted on it?”

“Don’t go near it,” Justin warns again.

“But –”

“It’s the Clownfish Box. We don’t. Talk. About the Clownfish Box.” He punctuates this with a pointed A-minor strum, and slides into a up-tempo rendition of ‘Jolene’, getting a few bars in before the door to the cave swings open and –

“I’ve come to grace you with my glorious presence,” Simone announces, skipping the steps entirely and just leaping straight through the door and onto the stone floor of the cave. She brightens visibly and drastically as she sees Pat, and she wriggles her fingers in delight. “Oh my god, you’re alive!”

“You thought I’d _die_?” Pat shoots back. “_God_ couldn’t kill me at this point, Simone. He’s too much of a coward to strike the finishing blow.”

She cackles and swoops him up in a terrifying hug, in that it’s terrifying how strong she is. She could probably crush him as easily as the Mariana Trench could crush a tin can, but she doesn’t because she’s delighted to see him and being oddly gentle with him too. She breaks free and hops back a few steps, just beaming at him. “It’s good to see you, Pat,” she says, and then she glances behind her, and adds, “I’ll leave you two alone for a bit, then,” and she heads off to the rockpool, already waving at Rachel, and –

There he is. Oh, there he is.

He’s chatting to Griffin and Travis cheerfully as they head into the cave, hands gesticulating wildly as he makes a point or emphasises a conclusion he’s come to, but Pat can’t hear whatever he’s saying because he’s just so relieved to see him. And then he looks up and he meets Pat’s eyes, and then it’s just Brian Brian Brian Brian Brian – he’s here and he’s real and he’s not a product of Pat’s oxygen-deprived hormone-releasing brain.

And then within touching distance, and then they’re kissing – desperately, passionately, electrifyingly. Pat could swear he feels sparks literally flying, and then he half-opens his eyes for a brief second and realizes that they are. Golden fiery glints of light are exploding all around them like tiny magical fireworks – catching in Brian’s hair and on Pat’s sleeves and spiralling all around them so they’re caught in the centerpoint of the world’s strangest tornado. Hey, magic? What the fuck?

Griffin wolf-whistles, because he’s an asshole like that, and at that Brian opens his eyes and laughs wholeheartedly when he sees what’s going on. He runs a hand through his hair, making sparks shower everywhere, and then brushes at Pat’s hair, doing the same for him. The sparks skitter along his skin, and melt along his fingers like shaved ice.

“Man, that feels all tingly,” he says, shaking his arms out and bouncing a little. His grin is bright. He shimmers in the light of hundreds of pinpricks of flame all around him. He’s the most beautiful thing Pat’s ever seen.

“Is that love magic?” Travis asks, from across the room, sounding completely delighted. “Are you channelling the power of love for that? That’s fucking _neat, _can you do it again?”

Pat can and he does, and Brian is perfectly okay with this turn of events. There are events that will unfold after this moment, and less happy things that they have to discuss, and plans to work out. But for now, it’s just life and light and love and magic. It’s all he needs and all he wants.

And oh boy, is he ever grateful for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Closing thoughts:
> 
> 1) thank u for coming on this journey with me! sorry this last bit took so long, and that the ending wasn’t more well-thought-out/didn’t entirely deal with some of the stuff I initially set up, but honestly I don’t think I could do ‘This Is A Segment Called: Sorcerer Revenge’ the justice it deserves, so I’m leaving it up to your imagination.
> 
> 2) you are Most Certainly going to see me around with more weird stuff in future! maybe not in the Polygon fandom for a bit, because my brain’s got itself hooked on another neat thing for the foreseeable future, but i definitely will be back eventually to torment you all with my story ideas. and i will probably be back to do more stuff for as the crow flies, because this ‘verse is great and fun and brilliant!! thank you for letting me play around in your sandbox segs i love u
> 
> 3) once again i am @not_toofamiliar on Twitter! maybe let me know in the comments if you’re planning on following me so I know who you are!
> 
> 4) I LOVE YOU ALL! your comments have been so lovely and have made me so! happy! seriously I can't express how great it's been to work on this with all of your wonderful thoughts hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. i am without words. but like in a great brilliant way. thank you thank you thank you
> 
> 5) any further thoughts on this will go on twitter later because it's late and i'm tired. see you there.
> 
> \- Min, signing off


End file.
